Product category:
General Machining Subcontracting Services
News Release from: Unicut Precision
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 28 November 2005
Small turned parts contract for
aerospace work
Unicut Precision has secured the renewal of a small turned parts contract with a major US aerospace company that will be worth more than £1.25 million to the precision machinist.
Unicut Precision has secured the renewal of a small turned parts contract with a major US aerospace company that will be worth more than £1.25 million to the Welwyn Garden City precision machinist over the next two years At the signing of the contract, Unicut's two joint managing directors Jason Nicholson and Charles Kenny were complemented by the customer for not having a single reject component logged against them out of some nine million turned parts supplied during 2005
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 27 Apr 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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Such has been the upsurge in the fortunes of Unicut Precision that July and August have set record sales and profit levels for its precision sub-con tract machining business.
With the US orders and further contract renewals in Europe, Unicut starts 2006 with an early schedule of deliveries worth well over £750,000 and a closing year turnover improved by more than 28 per cent over 2004.
Said Jason Nicholson: "It's been a very busy 12 months adding some £300,000 of new customer business from the UK plus overseas contracts to our order books.
We have also experienced considerable increases in call-offs from existing customers while purchasing and commissioning new machinery and expanding the company into the unit next door to double our floor space to 12,500 ft2." The American contract, won late in 2004, was originally worth £500,000 to supply five million turned parts involving 70 different components.
Further reading
Big order led to new machine purchases
Following the winning of a 12 month contract for three million components from an American fastener company, Unicut Precision immediately ordered two CNC sliding head automatic lathes.
Machining solution was a burner for gas fires
It was the capability of subcontract machinist to provide single operation turning solutions that took some 20 per cent out of the price of gas fire burner heads and ensured total consistency.
However, so impressed was the customer by Unicut's performance, quality, ability to deliver at short notice on important jobs and attention to detail in areas such as certification, that within 10 months the contract value to £750,000.
In that time Unicut produced three million parts in batch sizes between just 10 and 40,000, while one particular order involved the supply of six million of the same component.
With overseas sales now worth around 40 per cent of the business, Unicut has also found itself becoming extremely competitive on the German market, delivering more than £100,000 worth of components to a Tier 1 automotive supplier.
Maintains Charles Kenny: "Next year we will be working for two German companies having won another contract against Eastern European suppliers." But as competition mounts he insists that it has been the continual investment policy that has made them so competitive.
"This enables us to react and change over quickly and combine multiple operations into single cycles on our latest Citizen CNC sliding head autos and Miyano compact turning centre," he says.
He follows on to comment on the levels of quality being maintained by Unicut: "We have been supplying this particular US customer for five years and in that time have had only two quality issues and these were down to problems in the material, not the machining.
It's totally down to the attitude of the workforce and their capability to make the most from using modern equipment and that is definitely securing our future.".
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