The manufacturer of round, flat and profile wire is spending over £500,000 into the construction of a dedicated 2,880 square foot space alongside its existing Narrowboat Way factory.
Designed to help the firm meet increasing global customer demand for its material, the investment includes the doubling of electrical capacity with an application submitted to increase input to allow for the installation of more machines and a new furnace.
It will also mean AWI can hold up to 400 tonnes of stock when the expansion is completed in June, and this safeguards security of supply to its clients for the foreseeable future.
Tom Mander, managing director designate at Alloy Wire International, commented: “We finished 2021 with two record months and we expect March to be our best-ever order intake, as the world’s manufacturing sectors try to protect against future disruption.
“Interest is coming from all the markets we supply, whether that is oil and gas and nuclear, or spring-making, medical and advanced engineering. This has given us the confidence to press the button on our latest investment and the additional warehousing we’re going to need.
“This investment gives us the confidence and, importantly, the platform, to increase our stock range and explore new alloys that offer different solutions to our clients.
He continued: “Other new investments are planned for the next twelve months, including a new multi-head spooling machine in our annealing section and a wet drawing machine for very fine wires between 0.002” (0.06mm) to 0.005” (.15mm).”
Alloy Wire International manufactures round, flat and profile wire in over 60 exotic alloys, such as Inconel, Monel, Hastelloy, Nimonic and Rene 41.
He added: “The technical team has also been busy at work exploring the possibility of using our material in additive manufacturing and the introduction of new alloys in our range. INCONEL: 617,a nickel-chromium-cobalt-molybdenum-aluminium alloy, is our latest addition. This delivers a combination of increased strength and stability at elevated temperatures (up to 1100°C), whilst retaining the high temperature corrosion resistance of INCONEL alloy 601.”
