£16.5m hot-forging facility announced

The University of Strathclyde’s Advanced Forming Research Centre (AFRC) has secured £16.5m of funding to establish an advanced hot-forging facility.

FutureForge, as it will be named, will adjoin the existing Renfrewshire-based centre and help generate around £40m of new collaborative R&D projects over 10 years, creating up to 34 new jobs. Set to begin operating in 2020, FutureForge will be the world’s most advanced hot-forging research platform and include a one-of-a-kind, industry 4.0-ready demonstrator. The facility will enable the AFRC to work with companies to increase their global competitiveness.
For further information www.strath.ac.uk/research

Welcome evening at Matsuura

Matsuura Machinery Ltd recently held a welcome evening for the four successful candidates who comprise the company’s next intake of technical apprentices.

Their families were also welcomed along to find out more about Matsuura and the staff who will guide their sons through their time at the company. Long-serving members of staff from each department spent time with the young recruits and their families, providing them with a good understanding of Matsuura, its products and customers.
For further information www.matsuura.co.uk

Schunk introduces new general manager

After 18 years at the helm of Schunk Intec Ltd, Martin Kent has stepped down from his role as general manager to allow Marcel Machado to take the reins. Machado arrives from machine tool and plastic injection moulding specialist Romi Machine Tools.

Commenting upon his new position, Machado says: “The opportunity to work with a global brand like Schunk was too good to miss. Roles of such magnitude are generally only available when a company is in difficulty. However, Martin has done a fantastic job in growing the UK business, which is yielding year-on-year growth.
“Thankfully, Martin will be staying with Schunk in a managerial role and his expertise and support as we go forward will be critical to our continued success,” continues Machado. “My personal challenge is to keep a consistent pace of growth and intensify our efforts with regard to targeting new market segments and building new relationships and sales networks.”.
For further information www.gb.schunk.com

Storage system has space for 686 pallets

To create space and capacity for growth, a new 4000 sq m plant has been built on a 25,000 sq m site in the German town of Hettenleidelheim by Blum GmbH, a company that specialises in sheet metal working and switch cabinet manufacture.

Blum now holds its raw sheet material and finished parts in a high-density Uniline sheet storage system supplied by Kasto. The system, which has space for up to 686 pallets, ensures safe and reliable material handling and efficient supply to connected flat-bed sheet metal working machinery. Bending and folding, as well as manual and robotic welding, are also carried out on site.
For further information www.kasto.com

Blum celebrates major anniversaries

One of the world’s leading ‘in-machine’ measurement specialists is celebrating two big birthdays in 2018, with its UK operation 18 years-old and its German parent reaching half a century.

“We started out as a one-man engineering office when founder Günther Blum combined his studies in aerospace engineering with design work for machine tool manufacturers, eventually leading to him starting his own company in Schmalegg, near Ravensburg, Germany,” explains David Mold, who founded the UK subsidiary in 2000.
“The company has come a long way in 50 years and now employs close on 550 people across 16 operations worldwide,” he adds. “In order to mark the celebrations, we took a number of customers over to Blum Tech-Talk, a major event that gave them the opportunity to see how our probes and systems are built, and see the scale of our manufacturing facilities.”
For further information www.blum-novotest.com