To give an example, the company currently uses two Nakamura-Tome twin-spindle, twin-turret turning machines to produce a family of copper components for power switchgear applications. Rather than machine these from bar or cylindrical billet the starting point is a cold formed blank.

As Dawson Shanahan’s joint managing director Les Reeves explains, “We look to see where our expertise will work best to give us a competitive edge and give the customer what they want. At the moment the cost of copper is around £4,000 per tonne, and once you add on the mill’s conversion cost that can become £6,000. So the key is to use that material efficiently.

"By producing a cold formed blank we can achieve material savings of up to 70%. And by using a near net shape blank we can minimise the amount of machining required to finish it off. Significant cost reductions have also been achieved in both ferrous and non-ferrous materials using the cold-formed approach.”