Members of the Industry Committee of the Worshipful Company of Founders recently joined the CMF CEO for a visit and tour of MRT Castings Ltd in Andover, as part of an on-going programme of industry engagement.
Managing Director Phil Rawnson explained to the visitor how the team at the company had responded to the ventilator challenge during 2020, scaling up its manufacturing capacity to produce sufficient components for its global medical device customers to build over 500 critical-care ventilators per week to help meet domestic and international demand. During this time sales grew by 437% and the proportion of sales exported increased to 85% of total sales. This led, in 2022, to the company being honoured with a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade, in recognition of their outstanding export growth over the previous three years, as well as the 2022 Best of British Casting Company of the Year Award from the Cast Metals Federation (the Trade Association for the UK castings and foundry industry).
Phil explained how the company, which was incorporated in 1947 in Bromley, Kent then moved to Peckham in 1954, before relocating to its current premises in Andover, Hampshire in 1966. As a family owned business, the company has continually invested in the latest technology and training to ensure it can manufacture high quality aluminium die casting. MRT’s current export markets cover Western Europe, Eastern Europe and North America supplying parts for defence, medical and general engineering applications.
The visitors were able to see the technology and equipment used to manufacture the components, including a range of high pressure diecasting machines, with the complex tooling used to create the shapes, and extensive machining centres required to finish the components, as well as the range of quality assurance processes employed to ensure that the components reliably meet customers specifications.
The visit finished with a discussion about the future challenged and opportunities for the UK component casting industry over lunch.
The next visit by the committee will be to the MTC at Ansty, near Coventry on the 30th November.
“MTC offers metal powder bed fusion, design for AM and process simulation, polymer additive manufacturing, directed energy deposition, binder jetting, ceramic AM, and can also speak about the state of AM in the UK”.
