Unison flexible for international expansion with new site launch

UNISON, the manufacturer of all-electric tube bending machines, has opened a new facility as it looks to growth in international markets.

Purpose-fitted for machine design and manufacture, the building more than doubles the production capacity of the fast growing Scarborough-based company, and accelerates machine building times by around 15%.

“The new facility has allowed us to expand every major department in Unison – we now have more software and hardware development engineers, and more manufacturing and sales staff,” says Alan Pickering, managing director of Unison.

“Our investment positions us well to cope with the growth in demand that we have been experiencing, as well as our projected expansion into new markets that we are targeting in BRIC countries.”

Located close to Unison’s previous building, the new facility gives Unison more than 2,200 sq m of manufacturing space, along with two acres of surrounding land. The building interior has been remodelled to increase Unison’s manufacturing efficiency and capacity.

Unison is growing rapidly, thanks to its focus on the most advanced sector of this metalwork machinery market – all-electric machines with their computer-controlled bending – plus the company’s willingness to invest in design which has continually extended the scope of the bending technology into larger tube and pipe sizes.

All-electric bending machines, rather than the traditional hydraulically powered machines, have now become the de-facto standard in all of the precision metalwork fabrication markets that Unison specialises in, including aerospace, automotive production, shipbuilding, oil and gas, and small-batch manufacturing.

“We already have the reputation as the pioneer of all-electric tube bending, and we aim to make our new Scarborough facility the world centre for advancing this technology,” added Pickering.

“We recently manufactured the world’s largest-ever all electric tube bender – with the ability to bend pipes up to eight inches in diameter – a size that some said could not be achieved. And we are now starting to design a machine with more than double the power. With the accuracy, repeatability and speed of set-up advantages of all-electric technology, we expect to start taking market share from more hydraulic machine competitors in the near future.”