PLASTICS
teams. An approach that can lead to shorter development cycles and better use of physical as well as material resources.
BROANMAIN: THE PLASTICS SPECIALIST WITH AN EYE ON SUSTAINABILITY Founded in 1956 as a compression moulding business, Broanmain remains a family-run company. Underlining the company’s commitment to delivering innovative products that meet changing requirements of customers, including in the push to more sustainable practices, Davis said: “Integrity underpins every service we provide and as manufacturing techniques and technologies evolve, Broanmain considers itself a pioneer with the highest level of material, tooling and technical competency.” The company continues to adapt its own processes to meet sustainablity and efficiency challenges. For example, in early 2025 Broanmain installed a fully automated 320-ton Haitian injection moulding machine featuring
a Hilectro cartesian robot. The significance of this latest investment is indicative of the wider industry push focused on optimising performance in order to create a smarter, more predictive and sustainable production foundation for the future. The company also installed InTouch monitoring recently to observe where greater efficiency improvements can be realised.
“We are exploring every element of where we can reduce waste and being more resource efficient overall. This includes ensuring productivity from each unit of raw material and component we manufacture is maximised,” said Davis.
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
Serving UK and Ireland OEMs, Broanmain considers itself a natural extension of each customer’s engineering and product development
“From high volume production runs to precision moulding, CNC finishing and assembly, every project is managed by technically competent industry, materials and application experts,” highlighted Davis. This includes full support for tool design. Tooling is often a key part of the economics in plastic injection moulding and is the biggest one-time expense, noted Davis. For many production runs, no matter the volume, the tooling cost remains the same. Some small batch or limited batch runs may utilise aluminium tooling rather than hardened steel tools. However, these are hard to scale up if a company wants to expand production as they lack durability and often require replacing. Amortisation of the tooling cost is an essential part of the equation. Dividing the number of parts that are made by the injection moulding tool over its useful life can help to reduce the cost per part. These measurements can also assist with understanding how other processing variables, for example energy consumption, are impacted by tool quality.
Observing the cycle speeds at the new Hilectro machine Davis explained why mass manufacturing can actually have less of an impact on the environment than batch manufacturing. “It’s all about having a clear plan and managing plastic waste effectively. When utilised well, economies of scale, high volume production runs, secure storage facilities and Kanban can help OEMs fully maximise their costs savings, boost profitability and be more environmentally conscious.”
Broanmain Plastics
www.broanmainplastics.co.uk
UKManufacturing Summer 2025
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