“In the last four years material prices have increased by 90%.’ says Peter Durkin, Technical Director. ‘To keep our customers’ products competitive and to avoid losing their business to overseas competition we had to reduce our costs to avoid passing on all these increases. Therefore we had to look at the cost of raw materials and components in conjunction with our manufacturing costs.

“At our UK factory we have seen a 110% increase in the number of components produced over these last four years. This has been achieved by restructuring the shop floor. High volume CNC machines have been adapted into more medium volume producers by massively reducing set up times and introducing more flexible tooling.

“Through our global sourcing division, Components Worldwide, we source from China, where we have our own sourcing facility, employing English speaking engineers with years of experience in sourcing parts for western companies. We have also starting sourcing from India and Eastern Europe.”

Sourcing raw materials from low cost economies means that the parts can then, where necessary, be finish machined on the latest CNC machinery in one of the companny’s own factories. This combination of supply gives the most economic price and enables customers to retain their market competitiveness.