Telford manufacturer celebrates its 15th birthday with £1m investment

A SHROPSHIRE manufacturer is celebrating a decade and a half in business with a £1m investment that will propel it towards £5m sales.

Advanced Chemical Etching (ACE), which offers precision 2D and 3D components, prototyping and volume manufacture, plans to more than double the size of its Telford factory to over 20,000 sq ft.

Established in 2000 by Alan Rollason and Chris Ball, the company is expecting that the additional installation of two new large etching machine lines – plus advanced measuring equipment – will help it build on an influx of new orders for parts used in aerospace, automotive, electronics, Formula 1, medical, heat exchanger and fuel cell technology.

Rollason, who is chairman of the firm, said: “This expansion plan has been a long time coming and has taken a massive effort from all of our 35-strong workforce to make it a reality.

“We now have an excellent platform and the right capacity to go after new work and there is plenty of that around as companies are increasingly looking for that complex component or alternative use of materials.

“We’re at over £3m turnover now and I see no reason why we can’t achieve £5m in the next couple of years…the pipeline certainly suggests it is possible.”

ACE, which is a member of the Midlands Assembly Network (MAN), has recently developed two new processes using unique etching chemistry.

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