Premier partnership moves forward

Premier Autoclaves, who as a business focuses on autoclave upgrades and support, has been enlisted by Forward Composites to optimise the largest of its three autoclaves to a state-of-the-art aerospace condition. This includes entirely new hardware, a forced cooling system and Premier’s specially designed controls, CureManager, used on hundreds of autoclaves across the UK and Europe.

For Forward Composites, the upgrade comes off the back of a significant investment programme, having installed a new AMS 2750 Class 1 autoclave and Class 8 Clean Room in 2017. It has also built a temperature-controlled inspection facility which houses a new 1.2m x 2.2m x 1.0m Hexagon CMM, in addition to a new 100m³ fully digital walk-in freezer.

Following completion of this autoclave upgrade, further investment with Premier upgrading a third autoclave to AMS2750 and additional Class 8 rooms will be part of the 2019 programme of investment. According to Forward, this programme has been in conjunction with the increased footprint into the aerospace and defence markets that the company now enjoys.

It seems that exciting times are ahead in Huntingdon as Forward move towards gaining Nadcap accreditation, planned towards the end of Q1 2019 to add its AS9100 rev D certification.

“We are pleased to be working with Premier who are one of the market leaders in autoclave optimisation and servicing,” stated Forward’s managing director, Keith Fairbrass. Following detailed tender and review of various options, Premier were chosen supplier. “We selected Premier due to their extensive knowledge and desire to attain the best possible quality for their customers,” added Fairbrass.

Premier’s sales manager, Scott Dyson reckons this quality is one of the reasons other customers, such as Rolls-Royce, Solvay and Marshall ADG among others, also enlist the Yorkshire company to upgrade autoclaves for them.

“Our engineer workmanship has been raised as key when being rated as best supplier by 94% of customers surveyed,” he said. “This type of feedback is vital for our business and certainly helps others make informed decisions when assessing supplier options. We’re delighted to be playing a role in Forward’s exciting growth both with the upgrades and servicing thereafter, especially following their stringent tender process.”

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