“We had spent £500,000 earlier this year on upgrading our facility in Telford and have pressed the button on further investment to help us continue winning new work,” explains Ian Whateley, managing director. “The pre- and post-cleaning machines we installed have made us so much quicker, and we’ve also added new automatic loaders on to the lines that aid our move to lights-out manufacturing in some parts of production. Our investment allows us to compete with UK and international rivals, and gives us the flexibility we need to scale volumes up quickly when required.”
ACE specialises in the development of prototype components, pre-production parts and volume fulfilment to customers in aerospace, automotive, electronics, medical, telecoms and renewables. The scope of its activities can include anything from safety-critical components for aircraft and Formula One cars, to meshes and electronic connectors, and even frames for designer glasses. Parts can be manufactured in materials, such as stainless steel, nickel alloys, copper, beryllium copper, phosphor bronze, brass and, thanks to newly developed processes, aluminium, molybdenum, titanium, nitinol and Elgiloy. All components are developed and manufactured at its main site in Telford, or at the company’s dedicated sister business, ACE Forming Ltd, in Kingswinford.
Chris Ball, executive director, says: “We’ve won a number of new orders over the past 12 months, with contracts being placed from customers in the UK, Europe and the Far East. This has helped us offset falling volumes on existing projects in automotive. The decision to invest again has been taken to ensure we have the capacity in place to react when the current uncertainty has diminished.”
