Petersen Stainless Rigging completes £500,000 expansion programme
20 January 2015Petersen, a major manufacturer of stainless steel rigging and lifting equipment, has concluded a major expansion programme with the delivery of a new 12-axis lathe.
The new lathe increases Petersen's manufacturing capacity of its popular GTB turnbuckle bodies twelvefold, which will enable the business to increase productivity and improve delivery times.
Petersen has also strengthened its team with the appointment of Nathan McCluskey who is charged with developing tooling to increase productivity of forged components including swage shroud terminals and stemballs.
Improvements have already been realised at the company with new tooling for bending stainless steel shackles reducing the percentage requiring re-work from 80% to fewer than 3%.
Kevin Bell, CEO at Petersen has also made key changes to the company's management structure dedicating production director Ian Turnbull to increasing factory throughput, reducing wastes and improving quality.
He said: "On the back of our implementation of the aerospace quality standard AS9100:C the investments we have announced today underline our commitment to British manufacturing and engineering - we are proud to be able to say that our entire turnbuckle is manufactured by us, in our factory, in England.
"We are currently able to offer our customers better than 98% of deliveries on time and by making these commitments to our productivity we aim to better this to over 99% by the end of 2015."
