A TEESSIDE automotive manufacturer has fought off global competition to secure a major supply contract with Ford and invested in new machinery, securing a sales pipeline of over £19.5m throughout the project lifetime.
ElringKlinger (GB) has triumphed over its USA and European competitors after providing a competitive cost solution for automotive giant Ford, and investing over £2m in a state of the art 400 tonne Servo Press at its Redcar site.
The new machinery will see production exceed 900,000 parts per annum and cements the contract for the next five years.
The company’s engineers spent 12 months investigation the best options, assessing numerous Power Press manufacturers, looking at machine reliability, precision and process capability – finally procuring the latest Schuler press technology.
The design, development and tooling manufacturing phases are now complete and the production of components has now commenced on Teesside.
A global leader in press technology, ElringKlinger (GB’s) most recent announcement follows on from successes announced earlier in the year after securing several significant contracts with Jaguar Land Rover, which saw upwards of 20 jobs created and £6m invested in new machinery.
The company’s most recent technology investment will significantly increase production output and is part of the firm’s ongoing growth strategy, which has seen steady local recruitment since the firm set out plans in 2012 to double turnover to £26m by 2016 – a target which has already been achieved.
Ian Malcolm, managing director of ElringKlinger (GB), said: “The need to ensure our competiveness was paramount and this investment indicates our commitment to both Ford and to the local economy, supporting and achieving the aggressive growth targets we set ourselves two years ago, and underpinning the recruitment we committed to in 2014 and 2015. Our production and technical teams are now trained and in place to support this fantastic business acquisition for ElringKlinger (GB).
“The next target is to grow from around £17m product turnover in 2014 to £40m by 2020. We’ve been in business for 51 years on Teesside and have invested heavily in the last 18 months – in our site, facilities and people. We plan to build on this and continue to achieve bigger and better things going forwards.”
