A new milling machine at the heart of a GBP 26 million upgrade to British Steel’s Special Profiles business is under construction. The travelling-column machining center is currently being built in Germany by SHW Werkzeugmaschinen and will be delivered to British Steel’s Skinningrove site this year. The Uniforce 4000 five-axis machine will be situated in the company’s new forklift mast service centre which is currently under construction. It will be set up as a turnkey installation by Kingsbury, the machine manufacturer's sole agent in the UK, Ireland and GCC, and be able to hold extremely tight tolerance on special rolled steel profiles produced in the mill. The combination of size and accuracy will set the company's machining capability apart from that of all other global players. The new service center here will incorporate one of the finest large-capacity machine shops in the world, turning British Steel into the number one manufacturer globally of value-added machined Special Profiles, rolled to precise customer requirements. The first target market will be masts for forklift trucks, especially high-reach models. However, the milling machine will have the capability to enhance our offering across all sectors. Also included in the GBP 26 million investments are the purchase of four new CNC lathes for turning mill rolls, three band sawing cells for cutting stock to length, a laser measurement system for process control of every bar rolled, and a warehousing system for storing and retrieving raw and processed material. Previous significant investments involved the installation of an advanced surface descaling system and robotic identification tracking of each profile manufactured. It is predicted that the new processing facility will add a further 30,000 tonnes of output within the next two years. It will thereafter see a further substantial increase when material handling in the new plant becomes fully automated.
A new milling machine at the heart of a GBP 26 million upgrade to British Steel’s Special Profiles business is under construction. The travelling-column machining center is currently being built in Germany by SHW Werkzeugmaschinen and will be delivered to British Steel’s Skinningrove site this year. The Uniforce 4000 five-axis machine will be situated in the company’s new forklift mast service centre which is currently under construction. It will be set up as a turnkey installation by Kingsbury, the machine manufacturer's sole agent in the UK, Ireland and GCC, and be able to hold extremely tight tolerance on special rolled steel profiles produced in the mill. The combination of size and accuracy will set the company's machining capability apart from that of all other global players. The new service center here will incorporate one of the finest large-capacity machine shops in the world, turning British Steel into the number one manufacturer globally of value-added machined Special Profiles, rolled to precise customer requirements. The first target market will be masts for forklift trucks, especially high-reach models. However, the milling machine will have the capability to enhance our offering across all sectors. Also included in the GBP 26 million investments are the purchase of four new CNC lathes for turning mill rolls, three band sawing cells for cutting stock to length, a laser measurement system for process control of every bar rolled, and a warehousing system for storing and retrieving raw and processed material. Previous significant investments involved the installation of an advanced surface descaling system and robotic identification tracking of each profile manufactured. It is predicted that the new processing facility will add a further 30,000 tonnes of output within the next two years. It will thereafter see a further substantial increase when material handling in the new plant becomes fully automated.
