New factories and facilities, an array of huge investments and thousands of new jobs on this week’s Great British Manufacturing Podcast. We feature Cummins’ new £14m Powertrain Test Facility in Darlington, Dutch-owned paint and coatings manufacturer AkzoNobel’s £10m investment in Slough, sweet manufacturer Swizzels’ new factory in Middlewich, a new production facility in the UK for American-owned packaging manufacturer Crown, AESSEAL’s new Rotherham-based ‘Factory of the Future’, Leicester’s new £100m Space Park and lots more. Will Butler-Adams, CEO of innovative British bicycle manufacturer Brompton, is our special guest.
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The Great British manufacturing podcast brought to you by MTD MFG and Jefferson hello and welcome to the Great British manufacturing podcast on this week’s show we will review the news from the last seven days and welcome a special guest who is Will Butler Adams the CEO of brumpton bicycles Britain’s biggest bicycle maker but before I do I want to mention Factory now the factory
Now initiative has been launched to help British manufacturers boost sales collaborate and reshore new stories from new members are constantly hitting the site this week for example Factory now member MSC Industrial Supply of Premier distributor of metal work and Mr supplies has announed a new partnership with Colchester Machine Tools bringing
Two of their machines into its recently open Technology Center all this news and more can be found on MTD mfg.com slfa now Stuart welcome how we doing yeah very good Joe over I think we’ve got about half a dozen new companies uh to feature this week so no Bentley Motors
So apologies uh to to our friends in crew let’s crack on so workers commence at swizzle’s new Factory in Cheshire yes uh J Construction started work on the new facility for the bridges confet manufacturer Swizzle mlo magnitude in middlewich treasure for phase of a site that could almost triple
In size in time Swizzles as we all know best known for its popular love hearts drumsticks and Palmer Violet Suites is BAS in New Mills currently where the factory employees upward of 600 people its new facility is expected to be completed by the end of this year so I’m
Sure we’ll be revisiting that um in a few months time it’d be nice to get a tour wouldn’t it with all those sweets moving on Cummings massive company over here um you know they got a couple of PES here in the UK but the build a new facility in its Darlington plant yeah
The American own engine manufacturer’s new4 million pound powert train test facility as you say and its Darlington plant will help accelerate the move towards cleaner Next Generation pound Technologies ground preparation work is already underway with operations expected to start in may next year the facility will enable cins to develop and
Test a wider range of power Technologies including the latest Universal engine platforms with variants able to operate on Green hydrogen natural gas toal diesel insulation and testing capability will also extend to hydrogen fuel cell and Battery electric power trins and bit of an Insight the Indiana headquarter firm produced 66,000 engines at the
County D site last year where it employs around one and a half thousand people so huge organization is you say Jo yeah yeah I’m not sure people realize the size of their footprint just here in the UK colossal absolutely colossal um TR Holdings are building a new Factory in
The UK aren’t they yes um the Pennsylvania headquarter packaging manufacturers announced PL to build a new beverage cam manufacturing plant in the UK construction of Peterburg plant will begin during the second quarter of this year with the first line expected to come out to production during the second quarter of next year additional
Lines are also planned in a phase manner to to reach over three billion units of annual capacity finished 625,000 foot facility expected to employ around 280 people will be Crown’s largest manufacturing facility for beverage counts in Europe okay Stuart let’s take a brief pause on this week’s positive UK
Manufacturing news and introduce this week’s special guest who is Will Butler Adams CEO of bromton Britain’s largest bicycle manufacturer will thanks for joining us my pleasure just to start with before we learn about the company you know we’d like to learn a little bit about you if that’s possible so if we
Can talk about your career here today in your current role and responsibilities please yes potted history um I went to Newcastle uni did mechanical engineering and Spanish um as part of that study I worked for Nissan in Madrid and then I also worked for Cal Sonic a first tier
Supplier in Sunland supplying the Nissan factory up there then I got onto a graduate training program with ICI doing project management for a few years years then had this incredible roller coaster ride where I joined a role still um on Wilton site in Middlesboro where I thought I would just be
Managing uh four people in the tech team and then my boss resigned and they gave me the job and I had 35 people in a 2 million pound budget running a the maintenance of a chemical plant that if it blew up would take out a small part
Of the UK so it was very very exciting really challenging and engineering um but after nearly six years on on Wilton I thought it was time to do something different thought I was going to go and do an MBA and was busy studying to do that hoping to go to
France and then in the midst of all of that I randomly bumped into a chat called Tim Guinness who was a friend of the inventor of the bromton Andrew of course I’d never heard of the bromton when I was visiting London and I suppose the rest was
History I met Andrew and um decided to go for it because I didn’t think my my experience was that interesting and I thought London was an exciting Place thought I’d do it for a couple of years and I’m 20 years on I’m still here
Sounds good so now if we move on to the company if give us an overview of bompton for those that don’t know it please well we make something that’s makes you a little bit happier we make a bike that folds up it’s like the Swiss army knife of the bicycle and it’s
Particularly useful if you are sort of engaging with with cities where multimodal transport or spaces at a premium either if you live in a city which is where most of our customers come from or if you visit a city you commute in or you commute out you go
Once in a while because it’s a little bicycle that when it’s folded it’s no bigger than a briefcase and uh in then a magical 10 seconds obviously you’ve got to practice a bit to get it to 10 seconds pum out pops a bicycle and you whiz out on it and from an consumer
Experience it’s really simple and it’s just awesome from a technical perspective to deliver that is really quite tricky because there are lots of complicated things like hinges and it gets folded and unfolded a lot and you want to make it very light but it needs
To be very strong so it’s it’s not easy um and that’s what also makes it interesting as a job and a career absolutely and uh afternoon will Stewart thanks for joining us and um fascinating to hear about your your background and and and Brompton um Brompton recently launched the the the
First British made titanium folder bicycle great project could you please tell us more about this uh this U project yes I mean just to put it into context when I joined bromton there were sort of 34 35 of us and it was proper knife and fork manufacturing and we were
Basically making a bike we weren’t involved in much more than that we’re now now about 850 of us and we’re obviously involved in designing and making bikes but we’re also involved in their distribution retail and a whole load of other stuff in between so um it’s never boring but
Being a bike that you have to carry the bike industry is obsessed with weight but funny enough slightly um bizarrely really because of course you might have an incredibly lightweight bike but then you actually get on it so the most efficient way to make your riding lighter is actually to
Sort of make yourself lighter rather than the bike um but often people find it easier to spend more money and get a lighter bike than than to sort out their own their own weight situation but um but obviously with a folding bike we’re not interested in the weight of the
Combined Rider and bike we’re interested in the weight of the bike when it’s folding dangling off the end of your arm so try to make something that is light bit like I talked about earlier is quite tricky particularly in the context of the use you know the Brompton isn’t some
Enthusiast product that they polish every weekend before they go out for their bike ride it’s used by people as a tool it get covered in mud Grime dirt it gets whacked smacked you’re running for a train you accidentally whack it you’re putting it out of the car you’re in a
Rush the thing has to be really robust and um we started a journey 15 years ago which was quite an adventure um developing some frame Parts in Russia um with a lovely company just outside Moscow and they were making a titanium rear frame for us and we learned a lot
From that and and it’s a whole other story The Journey of of of doing business in in Old sort of Soviet um military part of the Russian economy um but to cut a long story short we we could only go so far with them because ultimately the more we did the more we’d
Give away our IP so we wanted to develop our own capability and as we got bigger we had the sort of depth to be able to take that on initially we tried to buy what we thought was a British titanium frame maker but it turned out they were actually just buying titanium frames
From China and then sort of shot blasting them sort of slightly pretending they made them in the UK and luckily for us we stumbled across flet which is a family-owned fabrication business in Sheffield who make very big bits of titanium for the Aerospace industry and um they were a you know get
Up and go bunch and when I met them I said listen any chance you can give up a little corner In Your enormous Factory and see if we can have a crack at making titanium frames and that was about eight years ago and uh we set up a JV we
Developed the team we developed the knowledge we developed the mechanism for training our staff we then they then built a unit on their site for us as we needed more space and uh and over that Journey we took set about designing our own titanium Brompton if you like and and
Even though it is a bromton if you see it is called a taline everything about it is different because the material demands different technical design capability um so it it was been an incredible journey but I’ve wanted one of the these bikes it’s been in my mind
For 15 years I sort of imagined it and it’s so cool to actually be making them and it’s it’s gone from a vision an idea a wacky thought into absolute reality it’s so so satisfying I can well imagine an incredible achievement and uh good that you’re using uh um the likes of
Ples in Sheffield as well to to work on the project and um moving on um obviously huge recent news that um with your plans to build a new production fac facility in global HQ in Kent would you mind just giving us an overview of this you know the reasons for this investment
Job creation the advantages and so so on and so forth yes um just remember there were 33 of us when I joined and when Andrew started it was him and Patrick in a railway Arch so it’s been a bit of a journey but we’ve remained in London in
Fact we moved factor six years ago and we could have moved outside of London then and there were plenty of people tempting us to move our facilities you know in in in the sort of in avered commers industrial Heartland but we are an urban product
And a lot of the success that we have had is because of where we make the bike which is in London and we’re not just making a bike we’ve actually now got more people involved in the brand the distribution the communication software Engineers we do all of our own content
We got our own Studio we’ve got our own editing Suite marketing planning Logistics so people actually making the bik out of the 850 is about 350 to 400 the rest of the business is managing a global brand and the distribution and communication associated with that so not just about making stuff it’s the
Whole bang shoot and it’s always been important to me that even if you’re in finance I want you in the factory so you really know what you stand for and and that you’re contributing to this product being put in the hands of a customer that can enjoy it for for many many
Years and we did try six years ago to try to build our own Factory because basically in the UK well factories don’t exist what we’re in is is a logistics shed because that’s what people build today big gray logistic sheds and um having failed to secure any
Land to build our own Factory six years ago we we we we we rented this bigger big shed and that’s great and we’ve got a good landlord as a happens but it we spent nearly 5 million pounds turning a universal distribution shed into a real factory for bik making which involves
Much much higher rated power oxy o acetylene you know all of the the the the the um supply of data and all this different infrastructure needed in the building and then of course when it’s a Distribution Hub all you’ve got really is 15 or 20 people in 100,000 foot shed
Shifting boxes well we’ve got 300 staff showers you know pingpong tables bar loads of other stuff and and and of course we spend all that money and then we rent into building and then when we it getss too small for us we’ll spend 2 million quid taking out
All the stuff we put in it’s like nuts it’s not designed for us and since covid the cost of sheds has gone through the roof and if we’re not careful we’re going to be priced out so we need to be proactive and we did look again across
The UK as to where we might move our HQ but London has such a strong history and it’s so important our staff are from all over the world they’re very cosmopolitan and they’re very Dynamic and that’s helped us with our export which is now over
75% and we don’t want to lose that and slightly to our surprise Ashford popped up and it’s a really intriguing place because because of um Eurostar and and the fast rail it is within sort of 35 minutes from London so a lot of our younger Dynamic Cosmopolitan Talent can
Come out out to the facility for two or three days a week and and and then work from home for the rest and still we can still reach into that pool of talent um one of our problems that we’ve always had living in L making in London
Has been when some of our staff who joined us when they’re younger get older and start having a family it’s very very expensive to find a real home in London and obviously Ashford has the advantage of you can come out two or three days a
Week uh when we scoop you up when you’re young and if you do go on to have a family you potentially can move out and this fantastic affordable much more affordable living out in Ashford Great Outdoor space with the downs and we’ve got a really committed Community
There we spent two years working with them um from the entire Community the council the college the universities are all behind this plan and it will be our home for the next 34 40 50 years and we’ve got enough space 40 acres we may
Never use it up but we want to know that if we do need more space we we don’t need to move we can just expand expand expand so we’ve still got a lot to do to deliver that Vision bit like delivering the titanium bike but it is very
Exciting no absolutely and uh we look forward to following that uh with interest and hopefully you’ll be uh Turing to the podcast uh um you know in the in the near future to to give us an update and just moving on to to the broader Market um I mean according to
The conf Federation of the European bicycle industry um the number of cyclists on Europe’s roads has increased sharply since the start of the pandemic how has this affected bromton you know with regards to exports production volumes new markets Etc well we need to think a little bit and
Need to be a bit careful just about referring to bicycles because there are different types of bikes and really for the last 50 or 60 years the bicycle in Europe and in the west has been a recreational tool it’s been a road B bike a mounted bike people gave
Up on bicycles as a mode of Transport in the 50s and 60s interestingly Brompton is really its raise on debt is about changing how people live in cities it’s about bringing a bit of freedom and happiness to cities we’ve bizarrely allowed ourselves to design cities around a square metal box called an
Automobile and well it hasn’t made us very happy cities are where most of the world lives but then they’re the most unhealthy places to live who could have come up with that that’s not a good plan so there has been two changes since covid one change is no one has been able
To travel so they’ve tended to have their Recreation their holidays at home and in that in many cases that meant people have bought bikes for recreation and you know they’re staying at home and they’re going locally and they’ll take some bikes with them and have some fun which is great
Um the other one is there is this realization this Epiphany that’s gone on in cities across the world not just in Europe or the West that the way we’ve designed our cities is flawed and we need to rethink cities and design them around the people that live in them
Not around an automobile and make them the healthiest places and safest places to live and sort of cherish the architecture and the culture and the green spaces and the canals and a bicycle allows you to do that and that has resulted in a real wave of of
Political will to to change the cities to to introduce bike Lanes to introduce um congestion charges um and that is very good for our business and I think it’s good for society as a whole and I’m pretty confident that over the next 15 to 20 years this really tragic experience
We’ve been through will be a catalyst for changing cities and of course even beyond the sort of mental physical air quality challenges we’ve got a climate emergency so you know so our industry which is addressing a bigger challenge which is urban living I think really is on a long-term macro positive trend I
Think the mountain bike recreational bump that we’ve seen in sales that may e away a bit as people go back to you know going abroad for their holidays yeah no it I couldn’t agree more uh you’ve touched sh you know the environment sustainability you know how important is that to the bom
And what have you done and what are you doing to reach your Net Zero aspirations well I mean ultimately our mission isn’t shareholder value it isn’t profit our mission is to change how people live in cities to bring this freedom and happiness that’s what happens when you arrive in a city with a
Little folding bike it’s just you feel a little bit smug it’s fantastic and I’ve whizzed across cities all over the world so before we get into how we run our business you know we’ve heard about electric cars which don’t get me wrong are a big Improvement on a diesel
Internal combustion engine but you’re still carrying a two ton metal box around a city which that two ton metal box takes an enormous amount of energy and carbon to make and then you put a little jelly like 70 kilos human being inside and you’re carrying
2,70 kilos to carry 70 kilos so that’s a hugely inefficient way to move 70 kilos think of a bicycle we make at a Brompton electric bike it weighs 17 kilos not 2,000 kilos so we can move a 70 80 90 100 kilo human being with 17 kilos it is monstrously more efficient
So the first thing we need to be doing is you know dealing with the flipping elephant in the room and that is we need to get big Square metal boxes to carry a little jelly like person out of our cities and the only reason people are in
A Big M big S Square metal boxes because they worried they might hit another one and then they’ll be safe but they’re not thinking about all the pedestrians that aren’t in big Square metal boxes that you know if the mother lets go of a child’s hand might rush in front and
Then you know it’s dangerous so there has to be a complete rethink of how we live in our cities but that doesn’t take away from the fact that on top of that we have a responsibility about how we operate how we Supply how we design out
Waste how we reduce packaging and we are heavily engaged in that we signed up to to um Net Zero by 2030 and we signed up to that basically to tell everybody it’s not possible at the moment you cannot do it you might be able to do it if you’re in
A service industry that has got a few computers and you’re moving numbers from one screen to another but if you’re making stuff with aluminium steel titanium at the moment it’s complete pie in the sky so governments you know need to really think hard about how we change the industrial landscape away from coal
You know Coal Fired steel we need to go to electrification of these heavy Industries and that’s not going to happen in two or three years that’s going to take 10 or 15 years but we need steel green steel and it’s nowhere to be seen green aluminium there are some
Little pockets of experiments but that needs to to be really looked upon across Europe as a strategic imperative if we’re going to stand a chance to deliv at zero yeah no absolutely and it’s going to be a challenge for me for many people let alone us manufacturers but moving on
Uh like Stewart’s alluded to it’s an exciting period for bromton so what are your plans for this year and Beyond well to be honest I mean as a company we have just had two years it’s like somebody lobbed us into a tumble dryer and you know you you spend ages
Coming up with all these brilliant budgets and this plan and you put your Four cast together it’s like what I mean you just no way could we have got our head around what we’ve been through and we’re not out the woods yet we’ve still got tremendous challenges with supply
Chain and inflation and Logistics and brexit and a whole load of other things so I mean in the perfect world we wouldn’t mind just having a bit of period to just catch breath because our team are just pretty much done in you know we’ve worked our socks off every
Plan we had didn’t come to fruition we’ve had to think on our feet we’ve had to work longer hours we’ve had to it’s been just a period of permanent adrenaline rush and uh you know steady state just has not been there so you know there we’ve launched our titanium
Bike the tline we’ve launched our super light the P line um we’ve you know gone through a period of significant growth um we sort of could do with a year to just catch our breath stabilize the business bring back some efficiency because the last couple of years have
Really hit our gross margin um for all sorts of obvious reasons and and then and then and then collect every back together and then take the take the next steps wonderful exciting times and I can’t wait to learn more like Stuart says hopefully you’ll join us again on
The podcast absolutely for sure thank you so much guys for inviting me you’re more than welcome well hopefully we’ll have you on soon but yeah really do appreciate your time will Stuart fantastic interview and what a business no absolutely uh so pioneering great that it’s British and uh by the sound of
It there’s going to be hundreds of new jobs created in the next couple of years so U I’m sure we’ll be following their progress with with interest on the podcast yeah exciting time ahead indeed um as like we always say at this stage we we don’t get time to cover all the
News on the podcast so please go and search for us on social media we don’t take much finding go to MTD mfg.com for the latest uh news from the UK manufacturing sector and if you want to join us on the podcast drop an email podcast MTD msg.com but St if we get
Back on with some of the news axon nobl open a new facility in UK it’s quite a big one certainly is the Dutch own paint and coating manufacturer best known for its du looks kenol and Hite brands has open a new 10 million pound Global research and development
Center it SL site in the UK um adding to a growing list really of similar facilities located in countries around the world the facility um home to 120 Specialists will act as a major Hub within the company’s worldwide R&D Network and help to further Advance the firm’s Innovation capabilities
Especially in the area of decorative plants and this news facility follows on from the 2019 UK launch of axo Noble’s R&D Innovation campus in in feling so great to see all this in inward investment this week yeah and another one new facility lots of them uh a seal
This week they’ve got a new one in South Yorkshire yeah construction is already underway on the mechanical steel manufacturers facture the future at mil close in a project bringing the company’s total investment in rotheram to just over 61 million pound a total of 175 ,000 sare foot of new Factory
Buildings are being constructed at highest environmental standards and the existing plant is also will also benefit from um an update and a refurbishment as part of the project spending includes almost 6 million pound of green only investment such as solar panels back for storage and other energy saving or
Environmental measures commenting on on news Chris Ray MD parent group AES engineering so the the investment will allow the company to expand and can potentially unlock an additional 20 million pound of investment in the Brom area over the next 5 to 10 years so hopefully that that will come to
Fruition yeah it’s incredible isn’t it um and this last story this week it’s we we touch on it now and again space but a new space Park is officially opened in Leicester yes uh British astronaut Chim Peak has forly opened the new 100 million pound space Park in Leicester
The European Space Agency astronaut and former International Space Station crew member was guest of honor a ceremony at the space research in and teaching cluster the space par which is hoped will boost your Regional e economy by 34 of a billion pound a year and create two
And a half thousand jobs I already welcome a string of high-profile companies um I believe that these involved include rollsroyce vers and FIP Packard and also the government Bank satellite applications catapult yeah fantastic one isn’t it so we do touch on space from time to time
But it’s great to see that finally open but as I say that’s all we got time for this week Stuart um for people listening at home want to find out more positive UK manufacturing news please do go to MTD mfg.com uh follow Jefferson and MTD
On uh Twitter we’re not hard to find a big thank you to uh will Butler Adams the CEO of bromton Stuart thank you as always but the biggest thank you of all goes to you at home for listening we’ll see you next week thanks for listening to the Great British manufacturing podcast don’t
Forget to subscribe and leave a rating and a review you can find us on Twitter using @ MTD MFG and @ Jefferson MFG