Big company, local knowledge

Sheer size and industrial might counts for nothing if a company can't serve its local customer base efficiently.

With a global turnover of €49 billion and 170,000 members of staff on the payroll, they don't come much bigger than materials and technology specialist ThyssenKrupp. Yet despite its size, the company manages to maintain and develop close working partnerships with its customers as Dave Tudor discovered.

As a Group, ThyssenKrupp has formally existed since the late 1990s but as individual entities, Krupp Stahl AG and Thyssen Stahl AG have been in business for well over a century. Indeed, the Krupp factory in Essen is legendary in military history as an armaments manufacturer during the two World Wars. In World War One, Krupp produced most of the armaments for the German Imperial Army and its role in the Second World War was no less significant. Today, ThyssenKrupp is arguably best known for its expertise in elevator technology, but it is also a leading player in other disciplines such as aerospace and marine systems as well as materials processing, stockholding and distribution.

Closer to home and serving the UK market, ThyssenKrupp Materials (TKM) UK comprises six sub-divisions which collectively offer a wide range of materials and materials processing services. Billy Kingsbury is the company's national product manager for stainless steel. “ThyssenKrupp has significantly increased its presence in the UK stockholding market over the past 15 years,” he reveals. “Through a number of acquisitions and amalgamations we now have a network of strategically located processing centres, warehouses and offices in Birmingham, Camberley, Swindon, Heywood, Stockport and Northern Ireland. Geographically, we've got pretty much all of the UK covered.”

Predominantly, ThyssenKrupp Materials lists its core competencies as materials supply, integrated supply solutions and supply chain management. To provide the best possible service it has invested heavily in premises, storage and materials handling equipment and IT systems. The company carries extensive stocks of aluminium, carbon steel, stainless steel, titanium and plastics and, through its supply chain can source exotic materials such as Hastelloy, duplexes and Inconel.

Working together

As a total entity, under the overall guidance of managing director, Terry Sargeant, ThyssenKrupp Materials UK has a turnover of £153 million and employs 372 members of staff. Company approvals include ISO 9001, ISO14001, OHSAS 18001 (occupational health and safety) and TS16949 for its work in the automotive sector.
Divisional company directors reporting directly into Mr Sargeant look after the constituent elements of the business, but whilst each operates as a separate entity, Mr Kingsbury is keen to emphasise that TKM is very much a Group and as such shares resources, skills and even customers.

“Although divisional directors and managers are responsible for their own parts of the business we do meet regularly as a management team and approach challenges and problems and develop strategies from a Group perspective when required,” he explains. “But conversely, whilst we are part of a large group and take full advantage of the benefits that provides in terms of available resource, we operate more like a small company with our customers and work hard to develop close, longstanding relationships and partnerships. All customers are important to us – from large OEMs and tier one companies buying thousands of tonnes of material a year through to small subcontractors employing three people with more modest requirements.”

Divisional diversification

As previously mentioned, there are six divisions that make up TKM in the UK and each has its own particular speciality:
ThyssenKrupp Materials is one of the UK's largest stockholders of sheet form aluminium and stainless steel. It also offers a range of aluminium extrusions – either bespoke for specific customer applications or in standard angled, flat bar or round bar formats. The division also provides long length stainless steel across a wide spectrum of sizes and also stainless steel tube.

A successful niche area for the division is the supply of specialist cladding materials – including composites – for use in architectural products. Recently TKM has established a sole UK distribution deal with Elval based in Greece for the sale of its Etalbond product used extensively in architectural cladding applications. Other services offered by the division include the supply of plastics and polycarbonates and, somewhat unusually, LEDs for the signage industry.

The Metalfast Division, with its four strategically located branches, deals mainly in aluminium bar, sheet, plate and extrusions. Material is often cut to length to customer requirements so significant investment has been made in sawing machines with eight plate saws, five vertical saws and eight bar saws available across the four sites.

“In my opinion, Metalfasts' stock range is second to none in the UK,” Mr Kingsbury believes. “We not only make it our business to stock every size of standard extrusion grade, but we also provide more specialised hard alloys such as 7075 and 2014 grades.”

Stainless steel slit coils and blanks in all grades are the domain of Vetchberry Steels, the third division in the ThyssenKrupp Materials empire. At present, the material offering is exclusively stainless steel but plans are afoot to extend the portfolio to aluminium slit coils.

An in-house Robertson Rolling Mill is used to produce the tempered rolled strip and specially produced hardness ranges can be accommodated. Material can be supplied with sheared/slit edges and blanked if required.

“Vetchberry is really a stainless steel coil processing centre,” Mr Kingsbury says. “We receive the raw material in 1,500mm wide coil for example and then slit the material down to 50mm or 150mm wide and recoil it ready for the customer to process further. The lion's share of customers here are in the construction industry but we also find applications in more generic areas such as the stainless steel banding used on pallets.”

The Carbon Steel Division in practical terms actually comprises two sub-divisions. The first is Midlands Steel Solutions (MSS) – a Tividale, Midlands-based stockholder of mild steel tube and box section in grades S235, S275 and S355 that was acquired by ThyssenKrupp around 18 months ago. The second is a mild steel agency business based in the UK that sells material directly manufactured by ThyssenKrupp's own mill in Germany.
“Although we use material produced by our own mill internally, the UK agency sells product on its behalf mainly to other stockholders,” Mr Kingsbury says. “It's an important part of the Group's overall business because it sells in excess of 70,000 tonnes per year.”

Departing somewhat from conventional stockholding activity, TKM also operates an aluminium fabrication division known as Alserco. In reality, Alserco is a subcontract service offering CNC machining, cutting, punching, drilling, piercing and assembly work. “Alserco is something that sets us apart from the competition because many of the services it offers would ordinarily have to be subcontracted out,” Mr Kingsbury points out. “Alserco is ideal for any customer buying aluminium extrusion who doesn't want to process it in-house. It also provides value added services for our own stockholding division.”

Completing the line-up is the Tube Service Centre (TSC) which specialises in carbon steel tube. TSC is also heavily orientated towards material processing, providing cut to length, washed and deburred tube to customers mainly in the automotive sector.

Driving the company forward

On the subject of distinguishing itself from the competition, ThyssenKrupp Materials operates its own Logistics Division centred around a fleet of 36 liveried vehicles delivering directly to customers. Covering all of the UK and Ireland, the service operates from a National Distribution hub in the West Midlands.

“This is something our customers really appreciate because we're not reliant on third party carrier services,” enthuses Mr Kingsbury, “24, 48 and 72 hour delivery tariffs are available and the fleet has its own vehicles and personnel. It's a shared resource and serves all the individual division in the Group.”

Strong market sectors for TKM include catering, construction, architectural and automotive with a health mix of new and existing clients. “We're keen to keep our customer base diverse and are constantly monitoring new markets and opportunities,” Mr Kingsbury advises. “I think our greatest asset in general however is the quality of our staff. We are very much a company that believes in working closely with customers and the depth of knowledge our sales team has for example, is instrumental not only in winning new business but also looking after existing customers.”

TKM is a company that looks to the future too. Currently it has 10 apprentices working in the UK and all get to spend time working in different departments so they get a real feel for the overall business. “Our apprenticeship programme has been a real success,” Mr Kingsbury concludes. “Many of our best employees haven been down the apprenticeship route and it offers a high degree of future proofing for the future growth and prosperity of the company.”

ThyssenKrupp Materials
www.thyssenkruppmaterials.co.uk

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