The company is travelling to the show, described as the “world’s leading trade fair for electronics development and production”, with hopes of winning more than £500,000 in new orders from customers in the EU.
Five of Brandauer’s senior management will travel to Munich to showcase the firm’s new £250,000 Special Product Division (SPD), which gives the company the capability to work with clients on prototypes and small quantities before taking them through to mid and high volumes.
In fact this new facility is already winning work, with nearly £320,000 of new contracts secured, including lamination motors for use in aerospace and wind farms, and complex compliance pins – also known as ‘needle eye pins’ – for the automotive and white goods sectors.
Of Brandauer’s attendance at Productronica, Graham Allison, strategic sales manager, says: “Germany has always been a difficult market to crack and it has taken a good two years knocking at the door to get our first few leads.
“We have found there is a real capacity issue over there and in some other EU countries, and we believe we can offer a viable alternative to clients looking for reduced lead times, flexibility in volumes and requiring additional added value assembly services.”
Of the SPD specifically he says: “The introduction of our SPD facility has been the real game changer for us. We can now work with the client on initial ideas for new components, then bring them to prototype stage to prove the process works and the product performs in the way it should.
“From there we can build the tooling for it and transfer it into medium or high volume production. The journey is seamless and we become a strategic partner rather than just a subcontractor.”
The SPD is the result of a six-month project and provides a dedicated cell housing more than £200,000 worth of new machinery, including multiple low tonnage presses (3-60 tonne), hydraulic presses, a sheet metal guillotine, laser marking, CNC lathe and a second operation/final assembly area.
Brandauer has also set up a self-contained toolroom in the SPD, and has additionally installed its first 3D printer to produce initial prototypes at a fraction of the cost of that required to make tooling.
Concludes Allison: “We’ve been to Productronica before, but just as visitors to meet a few key contacts. It’s a massive show and we wanted to prove that we were serious about growing our client base in specialist electronics in Germany and other EU countries. We’ve got a three-year plan to grow the business to £10 million and international opportunities will be key to us exceeding this target.”
