BLACK Country based aerospace group Hampson Industries has lifted some of the gloom surrounding the business with the announcement of a record tooling order worth £34m.
The announcement is a major shot-in-the-arm to the Brierley Hill firm, which has been struggling since it issued a profits warning last month due to a delay in orders.
Investors also reacted favorably with the company’s shares rising by more than 43% during morning trading.
The company lost more than 60% of its share value following the profits warning and has been struggling to recover ever since.
The new order is through its US-based Aerospace Composites & Transparencies division.
The $53m contract, which is the largest ever and most complex single tooling contract secured by Hampson, is in respect of the design and manufacture of lightweight mandrel tools for carbon fibre lay-up for a major commercial aerospace programme.
The contract value is expected to be realised over a 12-month period, commencing immediately. It is not expected to require significant capital investment. Work will be undertaken at the group’s recently enlarged, California-based, Coast Composites Inc and Composites Horizons Inc facilities as well as at Detroit-based, Odyssey Industries.
Hampson’s chairman, Chris Geoghegan said: “We are delighted to have secured this high value tooling contract after some months of delays in the conversion of our strong quote pipeline into firm orders.”
It is the second significant contract signed in recent weeks following on from a £6.5m ($10m) order win in August.
“This latest win reflects Hampson’s unique ability, as market leader, to provide a fully-integrated, one-stop technology solution in light-weight, precision tooling. This involves not only the lay-up of large, high temperature, very tight tolerance composite structures but also the deployment of high speed machining capacity and specialist fabrication expertise across three of our North American facilities,” added Mr Geoghegan.
With the new contract, the group’s gross and net book-to-bill ratios for the year to date now stand at 149% and 123%, respectively.
