Beakbane has invested in new plant and facilities and recruited new staff after winning a contract from Heller UK to manufacture hundreds of heavy fabrications for machining centre tool magazines. The company is producing one magazine fabrication a day for Heller UK, and is already planning for increased volumes.
Kidderminster-based Beakbane is a leading supplier of machine protection equipment, supplying components such as slideway covers, bellows and armoured aprons for all kinds of machine tools. 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.
Heller's UK machine tool factory produces four models of 4-axis horizontal machining centre – the H2000, H4000, H5000 and H6000. Magazine fabrications supplied by Beakbane will be used on all of these machining centres which are exported around the world.
In addition, the fabrications 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 company is now Heller's sole external supplier of fabrications for magazines, and only fabrications for the very largest machines and non-standard items are made in-house in Germany.
Beakbane has invested approximately £80,000 on plant and equipment solely to support this project and, significantly, five new jobs have been created so that the factory can work a full twin shift system producing the magazine fabrications.
Heller UK's logistics manager, Tobias Grimm commented: “We started working with Beakbane over 15 years ago for the supply of slideway covers for a previous range of machines. As the relationship developed, they undertook more complex work and did a really good job for us. Then we made a strategic decision to have our centre of competence for chain type magazines based here in the UK. We needed a local supplier for the fabrications and naturally thought of Beakbane.”
Beakbane's managing director Mike Southwell commented: “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.”
Beakbane
www.beakbane.co.uk
