1st March 2015
Brothers Adam and Matt Bradley – respectively Top Tubes’ Managing Director and Finance Director – knew that this was going to be a good year for the company, and they were right: Top Tubes has recently been awarded Express & Star Business of the Year in the SME category.
The ever-present competitive pressures from foreign precision steel tube producers, as well as domestic suppliers, mean that Top Tubes has always regarded staying ahead of the field in terms of competitivess to be our number one priority.
Now, a major phase in our investment programme has been completed which will greatly reinforce our competitive edge: the incorporation into our number 2 mill line of the latest high speed cut-off press and an automatic tube bundling system. The resulting boost in efficiency achieved via the higher rolling speeds that these developments make possible is already being felt.
The new mill is capable of rolling tube from 12.7 to 50.8mm diameter and 0.8 to 2.5 gauge, and with a host of innovative features has been increasing Top Tubes’ capacity significantly throughout last year.
The state-of-the-art Mekosan automatic packaging line, which replaced a manual operation, and which we reported on in the last edition, also means much faster throughput.
“The completed no 2 mill line, which we started installing at the end of 2013, is now operating to its full potential”, says Top Tubes MD Adam Bradley, “and will, we fully expect, output an additional 5000 tonnes during this calendar year”.
