Great British Bake Off fuels £750k investment for Accrington manufacturer

A manufacturer based in Accrington has announced a six-figure investment after achieving strong growth in its bakeware division.

What More UK, which employs a team of 240 at its factory on Altham Business Park, has attributed the growing demand for its Wham, WhamCook and the newly acquired Push Pan ranges to the popularity of TV’s The Great British Bake Off.

Due to the increased orders, the company has updated its tool room capabilities by investing over £750k into three Quaser VMC machining centres from Warwickshire-based Engineering Technology Group (ETG).

The investment, What More UK said, will boost capacity, slash production times and increase its ability to handle large progression tools.

The firm’s press shop manager, Kevin Allum, said: “I’m a die-hard Bridgeport man and installed the first tape controlled CNC machine in our predecessor’s tool room as long ago as 1982.

“We needed additional bed size and, once ETG convinced me of the excellent build quality and multitude of facilities on the Quaser MV 234, 3 axis VMCs, I had no hesitation in recommending to the owner that these were the machines to purchase.”

Kevin continued: “It is not untypical for a tool to take 600 man hours to machine so obviously if we can achieve reductions in this, it improves productivity, reduces costs and contributes to the speed with which we can bring products to market.

“Our designers use Solid Works and VISI for the CAM element and they interface well with the Heidenhain machine controls.”

Today, What More UK designs and manufactures cake and loaf tins, oven trays, storage items and various other bakeware products, exporting to 71 countries.

Speaking further, Kevin said: “While our own designs predominate under the ‘Wham’ housewares brand we also do third party work. This can involve products with different shapes or signatures so once we have the designs and specifications we can reverse engineer to achieve manufacture in the most efficient way.

“It is a fast-moving consumables market and as such we need to act quickly when responding to trends and new product introductions – hence the major investment in our in-house toolroom.”

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