Strong expansion and job opportunities set to follow at the plant
Yorkshire-based Contract Production Ltd has increased its capacity by 400% virtually
overnight thanks to a £250,000 investment in new technology.
Contract Production manufactures a range of sub-contract electronic products and printed
circuit board assemblies for a wide variety of industries. This can be one-off prototypes, up
to volumes in their 10,000s. A recent investment and installation of an AM100 Panasonic
Pick and Place line has enabled the company to increase its output by an astonishing
400%.
The new production line populates printed circuit boards and can place a staggering
30,000 components per hour, blowing away previous capacity limits.
This essentially, means that we now measure productivity in seconds not minutes, said
Managing Director Simon Norris. Thanks to the new production line we have added an
extra 30-40 weeks of working capacity to the business annually; In time, that could see our
work force go from 20 employees to around 50-60 which will be great news for the area.
The new pick and place machine was manufactured in the Far East and shipped to the
manufacturing base in Pickering at the end of 2017. The system has effectively
streamlined the companys whole process, taking a bare printed circuit board, populating it
and producing an inspected product at the end of the line.
Obviously, the speed depends on the complexity of the circuit board or product we are
producing, said Simon.
He added: There has been a lot of talk about the UKs stagnating productivity levels but
this investment into Contract Productions shows there is opportunity and we can now
deliver on much larger orders with improved turnaround for our customers that we could
only dream of a few weeks ago. It is a major leap forward technology-wise and we are all
very excited about the possibilities this brings for the business and our customers.
As well as the larger orders going into the hundreds of thousands Contract Production also
produces one-off prototypes or low rate production runs for clients - often hand-placed - for
new products yet to go to market. These can be anything that requires circuit boards, from
GPS tracking devices to wind turbines, cameras to measuring instrumentation for deep
sea oil drilling rigs.
The Contract Production website can be found at: http://contract-production.co.uk