Wednesday, July 27, 2016

News: CW Fletcher lands £7m export deal

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CW Fletcher, a precision engineering firm based in Rotherham, has signed a £7m, three year export deal with Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI) of Japan.

The business supplies a diverse range of industries, including aerospace, nuclear and space exploration. Its "Sterling Works" is part of a 9.5-acre combined site located at Wales Bar in Rotherham where high-strength, lightweight assemblies in ordinary and exotic metallic materials are fabricated and high value-added components are machined.

Under the new agreement, CW Fletcher will supply unison ring components which will ultimately be fitted into Rolls-Royce aero engines.

Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd (KHI) is a Japanese public multinational corporation with interests in environmental control and energy plant engineering, machinery and robotics, ship building and marine engineering, power plant engineering and steel structures, rolling stock, aerospace, and famously, motorcycles.

KHI's relationship with Rolls-Royce dates back to 1959 when the two companies formed a technical alliance for the overhaul of the Orpheus jet engine. Since then the partnership has expanded to encompass a wide range of areas including defense aircraft engines and commercial aircraft. KHI supplies the intermediate pressure compressor (IPC) module for both the Trent 1000 and Trent XWB engines and has signed up as a partner for the Trent 7000 engine.

As one of the eight main modules that constitute the engine, the IPC module has a diameter of about 1.5 metres, a length of about 1.5 metres and is comprised of approximately 4,000 components.

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The new contract is part of CW Fletcher's ambitious strategy to increase its turnover from £20m to £32m by 2020 and underscores the company's success since joining Sharing in Growth (SIG), the government-backed competitiveness improvement programme.

Established in August 2013, the SiG programme helps aerospace supply chain companies to improve their productivity and competitiveness so they are better placed to win a share of continued growth in the global aerospace market. Each company participates in an intense four year training and development programme which attracts £1.2 million from the Regional Growth Fund (RGF) for each company.

Speaking at the recent Farnborough International Airshow where he signed the agreement with Mr Akio Onsuka of KHI, CW Fletcher managing director Steve Kirk (pictured) said: "This is a very important contract for us. It demonstrates the quality of our work and the skills of our workforce and it will safeguard Sheffield jobs. We are delighted that the Sharing in Growth programme has helped us win export business for Britain."

Andy Page, CEO of Sharing in Growth, added: "CW Fletcher joined the SiG programme to win business through increased productivity and competitiveness. Their achievement is outstanding and shows the effectiveness of the programme which so far helped UK aerospace companies secure more than £1 billion in orders to date – 20% of which is for direct export. Ultimately the SiG programme's goal is to secure 10,000 UK jobs by 2022."

Components for Rolls-Royce engines are already being manufactured in Rotherham. The leading firm officially opened the most advanced turbine blade casting facility in the world on the Advanced Manufacturing Park (AMP) in 2014. When fully operational in 2017, the 150,000 sq ft facility will employ 150 people and have the capacity to manufacture more than 100,000 single crystal turbine blades a year.

CW Fletcher website
Sharing in Growth website

Images: Sharing in Growth

2 comments:

Cllr Nigel Simpson July 27, 2016 at 11:04 AM  

Congratulations another success story outside of the EU.

Japan seems to be one of the first willing countries to begin unfetted trade with UK
There are many news stories of Japan doing all sorts of deals with UK
Indeed a compliment from such a developed go ahead business market.

Anonymous,  August 20, 2017 at 7:41 PM  

Business with Japan is just a continuation prior to living eu. This is just a commercial news for sig and eu exiters!!!

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