Advanced Chemical Etching (ACE) has seen demand for its etching service grow by 20% over the last four months, with strong interest from companies looking for busbars and components for battery management systems.
Bosses at the Hortonwood-based firm believe these two sectors alone have the potential to generate up to £1.8 million of sales between now and 2019 as more and more manufacturers begin to understand the benefits of a process that is fast, accurate and cost-effective. It has already funded new capital equipment to increase capacity and has also boosted its technical team by 30%.
Ian Whateley, managing director of ACE, explained: “Thermal management is one of industry’s most popular topics as we look to extend battery life and get more performance out of smaller components. This lends itself perfectly to what we do in Telford. Etching is often a new process for these customers, but once we have sat down with them, given them a glimpse of what it can do, nine times out of ten they choose this method of manufacture.”
He continued: “It’s not difficult to see why either. We can produce fast, accurate prototypes that are far more cost-effective than traditional production and we also have the capacity to manufacture these in low to medium volumes.
“We even have some examples where new customers have changed to etching because the current production method is not working for them. Some are standard type materials; others are more exotic, such as using titanium.”
ACE develops and manufactures all components at its 25,000ft2 facility in Telford and at its sister business ACE Forming in Kingswinford.
Using latest production machinery, a dedicated laboratory and state-of-the-art measuring capability ensures it can produce parts in materials including stainless steel, nickel alloys, copper, beryllium copper, phosphor bronze, brass and, thanks to new processes, aluminium, molybdenum, nitinol and elgiloy.
Advanced Chemical Etching www.ace-uk.net
