Automotive demand drives growth for castings firm
High demand from the automotive and rail industries has contributed to sales and profit growth for Coventry castings company Sarginsons.
The company, which supplies high performance cast aluminium alloys, is on track to grow year-on-year sales by 30% to £7.5m by the end of 2017.
Major developments at the company have included working in partnership with the Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Technology (BCAST) to develop new lightweight aluminium alloys that are as strong as steel and totally recyclable.
The partnership with BCAST – an academic research centre on the campus of Brunel University London and global leader in metallurgical casting research – is under the Lightweight Energy Absorbing Aluminium Structures for Transport (LEAAST) project.
Sarginsons are also key Industrial Partner at the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Liquid Metal Engineering (LiME), based at Brunel University in collaboration with the University of Oxford, University of Leeds, University of Manchester and Imperial College London.
The company has also invested heavily in new equipment and energy efficiency measures and is set to invest £500,000 in further upgrades by 2018.
Anthony Evans, managing director at Sarginsons, said: “We’re extremely pleased to announce strong performance figures for the year to date.
“We’ve seen a huge rise in the demand for aluminium components in the global automotive industry and that is a major factor in our on-going success.
“This year we’ve seen a major spike in new enquiries from tier one suppliers across Europe, which is further evidence the automotive industry in the UK remains buoyant, despite the on-going Brexit uncertainty.”
He said manufacturers were increasingly designing for the use of aluminium, especially with OEMs looking to counter heavyweight batteries and powertrains for electric vehicles with lightweight components.
With this trend continuing, he said there was likely to be sustained demand for the company’s components.
