A Midlands manufacturer and supplier of aluminium flat-rolled products has secured a £60m asset-based lending facility from HSBC UK to help diversify its product range and fuel future growth plans. One of Shropshire’s biggest employers, Bridgnorth Aluminium, produces metal strips for lithography printing. The business will use the funding from HSBC UK to diversify into different markets.

Bridgnorth, which has roots tracing back to 1933, will start to manufacture and supply new aluminium flat-rolled products to the drinks industry, helping to increase annual turnover by 40% over the next five years.

Mark Richards, finance manager at Bridgnorth Aluminium, says: “As a business with big ambitions we need to make strategic investments. Over the past 90 years, we’ve held a well-earned reputation for excellence in the lithography industry, which we want to extend into the drinks and retail markets. It’s an incredibly important and exciting milestone for us and we’re happy to have HSBC UK as a funding partner to help us on our new journey.”

The £60m, fully integrated ABL facility provides Bridgnorth with a significant increase in liquidity, allowing the company to invest in its future growth plans in a controlled and structured way.

Mark Lewis, relationship director at HSBC UK, says: “Bridgnorth has all the hard-working characteristics and heritage you’d expect from a long-established Midlands manufacturer, as well as the ability to look ahead through the lens of innovation. This is a pivotal move in the company’s history and is set to lay the foundations for a new, exciting chapter in Bridgnorth Aluminium’s story.”

For further information
www.bit.ly/3I8l0h2

A UK manufacturer of scaffold board end bands has posted an impressive 12% increase in volumes thanks to a timely investment in ancillary equipment and a switch to a 4-day working week. Chilwell Products, which is now under third-generation family ownership, has invested nearly £100,000 in equipping 11 of its power presses with the latest servo-feed technology from Bruderer UK.

Located at Stanton by Dale, the company was originally looking to continue using air feeds, but was convinced by experts from the high-speed press specialist to trial its MF-2P servo feeders and the results have been astonishing. Volumes have gone from 15.6 million to 17.5 million over the past 12 months and, better still, the firm has managed to achieve this in just four days, making Friday a permanent day off as a thank you (while all staff still maintain full pay).

“We always thought that using servo feeds would mean the material would slip when oily, but these initial concerns were quickly blown away once we put the equipment through a supported trial,” explains Laura Clarke, managing director of Chilwell Products and the granddaughter of company founder Derrick Telford. “Through experience we found set-up times were far quicker and the servo-feeds run the material significantly more efficiently than our incumbent air feeds: less jams, less downtime, and less material rejected and wasted. All making for much more efficient production.”

She adds: “With this in mind, we began to roll-out the feeders across every press in our factory and are now up to 11, with a 12th on order. Working 39 hours per week and overtime at multiple points throughout the year is now a thing of the past.”

For further information
www.bruderer.co.uk

Beckwood Press Company, a manufacturer of custom hydraulic and servo-electric presses, automation systems and the Triform line of precision forming equipment, was recently awarded a contract by Metal Forming Industries to manufacture a 200-ton hydraulic forming press. Scheduled for delivery later this year, the press will make copper components for the utility industry.

The custom four-post press will offer 200 tons of force with a Delta high-speed motion controller to achieve positional accuracy within ±0.005” (±0.13 mm) or better. A 20-ton ejection cylinder will strip the finished part from the tool and present it for easy removal. To overcome the deflection caused by point loading of the tool, the press structure will feature additional rigidity. With a fast approach speed of 373 inch/min (9.5 m/min) and a retract speed of 299 inch/min (7.6 m/min), the press will decrease Metal Forming Industries’ current cycle times by 50%.

Also included is Beckwood’s proprietary Pre-Preventive Maintenance system (PPM) which uses closed-loop monitoring to analyse system performance and notify operators and maintenance crews when service is necessary. It is possible to monitor pump efficiency, safety system status, filter cleanliness, valve performance, oil condition and more from the press HMI to prevent unplanned downtime.

“Metal Forming Industries approached us wanting to increase speed, accuracy, and precision in their forming operation,” says Beckwood sales engineer Caleb Dixon. “Through consultation and creative engineering we were able to design a press that will meet their operational needs for years to come.”

For further information
www.beckwoodpress.com

After in-person events came to a halt due to the pandemic, FABTECH will be the first large-scale manufacturing trade show to return to McCormick Place in Chicago on 13-16 September. The event brings all aspects of the metal fabricating, forming, welding and finishing industries together to showcase technology, innovation and solutions.

“FABTECH is one of the largest events held at McCormick Place, bringing $73m worth of delegation spending to Chicago,” says Ed Youdell, president and CEO of the Fabricators and Manufacturers Association. “Our last event in Chicago employed just short of 4000 labourers with over 110,000 hours of work. This contributed $5.3m of labour to the overall Chicago workforce. We are looking forward to bringing these jobs back. In addition, FABTECH will provide an important boost to the hospitality industry, utilising over 40 hotels as well as many entertainment and restaurant outlets during the 19 days.”

FABTECH facilitates connections between exhibitors and attendees in order to conduct business, share knowledge and shine the spotlight on advanced manufacturing equipment and technology. Attendees will have the opportunity to explore three halls filled with cutting-edge technology, new product debuts and first-hand product demonstrations from over 1000 exhibitors.

FABTECH has co-ordinated with state and local public health guidelines to develop a plan for its return, which should see around 30,000 visitors in attendance.

McCormick Place is fully prepared and ready to welcome events back. As North America’s largest convention centre, the entire McCormick Place Campus holds the Global Biorisk Advisory Council’s GBAC STAR accreditation, the gold standard for clean and safe facilities.

Attendee registration for FABTECH 2021 is open now.

For further information
www.fabtechexpo.com

COE Press Equipment’s latest ServoMaster Touch controller comes with a new larger 7” (178 mm) touchscreen, an additional Ethernet communications port and a host of tools that are particularly suited to the needs of roll formers. These roll form features include a stretch compensation tool. During roll forming, material can elongate or stretch. COE’s tool enables the user to enter the actual length of the stretched part, as well as the desired length. By pressing ‘accept’, the control applies a scaling factor to each step, thus compensating for any elongation.

Another feature is sequence mode. The ability to switch to sequence configuration permits the creation of multi-step jobs, enabling up to 50 steps per job to a total of 4000 steps of storage. Many applications that use sequence mode require a further new feature of the control – programmable outputs – which allows the addition of up to six programmable output cards (36 outputs) to a standard ServoMaster controller. Programmable outputs can be set to come on before, during or after the index, or not at all.

Interrupt is a function for roll forming applications that allows the mill to consume a loop of material after a punch operation. When the input is disabled by the roll form mill or other device, the controller pauses the index until the input is re-enabled. Once enabled, the feed will complete the index and resume operation.

Last but not least, FSP is a feature that enables the ServoMaster controller to close a contact and thus signal auxiliary equipment when each index is completed.

For further information
www.cpec.com/servo-and-plcs