More than £1 million has been invested by manufacturer Unistrut to expand production capabilities at its UK plant in West Bromwich.
The company, part of Atkore International, has invested the money to relocate production from elsewhere in Europe to the Midland plant, which produces metal framing systems and cable management products.
Unistrut is a global business with facilities in the UK, USA, Australia, France, New Zealand and China and is best known for the metal framing systems pioneered by the company and supplied to the construction sector for the support of mechanical and electrical services. It is also a major manufacturer of cable management products.
New machinery has been installed at the West Bromwich factory to speed up the production of the rolled steel channel sections that form the basis of the framing systems and the cable management products.
This includes an accumulator unit which allows the channel forming presses to operate continuously. Automated pick-and-place systems, welding plant and final packing have also been introduced along with new CNC-controlled press brakes and turret punches. As a result speed of production has been increased by nearly 70 per cent.
The move comes as the company redoubles its efforts in the Far East.
Gary Uren, Unistrut’s president for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific, said the West Bromwich site had strategic importance.
“Unistrut has led the field since the metal framing system was introduced in the 1920s. The improved manufacturing facilities at West Bromwich and the new factory in China, will enable us to maintain that leadership as we continue to extend our activities” he said.
Meanwhile a new £6.4 million factory has been opened in China to produce components such as channel bolts and other fixings.
This means that every element of Unistrut’s systems is manufactured in-house, under its own quality control.
Unistrut emphasises the importance of using quality trusted products throughout.
Paul Pryor, Unistrut’s marketing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said: “The integrity of any system is only as good as the individual parts. It is more often the fixings that fail rather than the channel itself and we are so confident in using the total Unistrut solution throughout that we back our engineering solutions with a ten-year warranty.”
The company prides itself in its engineering background and as such offers a total service with installation design, supply and post-production service, using its own in-house engineering staff and software.
It can also offer factory assembly of complete prefabricated service modules, cut to length, with brackets and other components pre-mounted.
These can be delivered to site or to a sub-contractor’s own factory where other elements, such as luminaires or air-handling units, may be added for fully serviced modules.
