Manufacturer invests in new plant and jobs for new contract

A WORCESTERSHIRE engineering company has invested in new plant and recruited new staff after securing a major order.

Beakbane, based in Kidderminster, has secured a contract from Helller UK to manufacture hundreds of heavy fabrications for machine tools.

Beakbane is a specialist in bellows and machinery protection. Its markets include machine tool building, security, transport, utilities, medical equipment, nuclear fuel processing, metrology and renewable energy. It supplies components such as slideway covers, bellows and armoured aprons for all kinds of machine tools.

The firm is producing one magazine fabrication a day for Heller UK and is already planning for increased volumes.

It complements this with a contract manufacturing service and has been supplying Heller with machine tool components and fabrications such as door sets since the 1990s.

The magazine fabrications had previously been made 100% in-house at Heller’s plant in Germany and the decision to re-source them in the UK came as part of Heller’s move to make Redditch its worldwide centre of excellence for chain-type tool magazines.

The fabrications from Beakbane will be incorporated in tool magazines supplied from Redditch to Heller’s other machine tool manufacturing plants in Germany and Brazil. Altogether, Beakbane is producing six variants of magazine fabrication, the heaviest weighing 1.25 tonnes.

The firm is now Heller’s sole external supplier of fabrications for magazines. Only fabrications for the very largest machines and non-standard items are made in-house in Germany.

Beakbane has invested around £80,000 on the plant and equipment to support the project. This includes welding equipment, fume extraction and compressors, as well as the installation of a pit and lift table to allow welding to be carried out at a safe and convenient height without the need for platforms or ladders. It has also added a new overhead crane in its Number 7 workshop to allow the new work to be carried out alongside existing production.

Five new jobs have been created so that the factory can work a full twin-shift system producing the magazine fabrications.

Mike Southwell, Beakbane’s managing director, said: “We are delighted that Heller has decided to entrust us with this major project. This adds yet another strand to our portfolio of services and products for machine tool manufacturers and shows that we are prepared to make major investments in time and resources to meet the needs of our customers.”