Member Article

Sertec presses ahead with £10m+ ‘ZANI’ investment

One of the UK’s fastest growing automotive suppliers has signed its largest ever ‘press’ investment ahead of MACH 2016.

The Sertec Group, which is a world class manufacturer of stampings and welded assemblies, has tapped into the ‘machinery’ expertise of Bruderer UK to identify and purchase 12 machines to help them meet growing volume demands from many of the world’s largest car makers.

The first tier supplier has committed more than £10m to the three-year modernisation programme that has seen it start to install a host of ZANI Motion Master presses (with unique ram velocity slow-down kinematics), ranging from 250 to 800 tonnes.

It marks the continuation of a long-term relationship between the company and Bruderer UK and will give it the speed, quality and capacity to develop structural stampings – in both steel and aluminium – for all of the new Jaguar Land Rover models.

“We have been the exclusive sales, spare parts and service provider for ZANI for more than two years in the UK and this is without doubt the biggest deal we’ve ever agreed,” explained Adrian Haller, Managing Director of Bruderer UK.

“Our specialists were invited in by Sertec to look at an upgrade plan for part of its press shop. We looked closely at its requirements, the end application and predictions of volumes going forward, with the answer to many of these questions being ‘ZANI’.”

He continued: “The Italian firm’s presses have been used by Sertec for more than 20 years and are renown for their durability, precision and their ability to prolong tool life. It initially started out as six machines, but quickly grew to 12, with all of them being fitted with coil lines and servo feeds.

“Our engineers will also be responsible for providing a full service, maintenance and spares programme that will ensure the presses are operating effectively and suffer from the minimal amount of downtime as possible.”

Dave Steggles, Managing Director of Sertec Group, added his support: “We expect to grow our £197m turnover significantly in 2016 and the key to continuing this momentum is to ensure we are investing in our technology and our capability.

“This project is unprecedented in terms of size and has quickly escalated from 6 presses to 12. It’s a learning curve, but one we’ll complete and one that will deliver greater quality, manufacturing performance and capacity to our customers.”

This news comes less than a week before Bruderer unveils the BSTA 410-110 at MACH, the first time the high speed press will have been seen in the UK.

Adrian concluded: “MACH is a massive show for us and we’re delighted that we’ll be able to showcase a number of new ZANI presses, along with some structural automotive parts manufactured by Sertec…another example of our collaborative approach.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Russ Cockburn .