The Derby winner!

Derby-based composites specialist epm: technology is taking a leap into the future by doubling its workforce and building a new factory. At a time when companies are shrinking, it is a welcome surprise to see one pushing the boat in the other direction. For managing director Graham Mulholland, it is about seizing the opportunity in a growth market. In his words, to paraphrase sprinter Linford Christie, it’s about being first, by going on the ‘B of the Bang’. By Easter of next year – maybe earlier – the company will have moved the majority of its employees into a brand new facility in Raynesworth. The new site is just a short drive from epm’s existing factory – which allowed the workforce to visit it by open-topped bus recently. While the new building is still only a steel shell with a recently fitted roof, Mulholland says that it’s vital for employees to ‘own’ the new space. “I take the view that it will become our mothership in time,” he says. “Finding a site in Derby was a stroke of luck: it fitted beautifully.” Think big Mulholland says that the £6m plant is “the biggest privately built building in Derby in the last nine years”. It was built with help from a £4.75m loan from Derby Enterprise Growth Fund. When complete, the plant will occupy more than 50,000ft². “We are a high performance engineering company – which does not seem to fit into the high street banks’ lending criteria – and have struggled to secure funding to move forward with our plans,” he says. Mulholland has ambitious plans for the company: as well as expanding production, the new factory will help epm move further into R&D – and become a ‘problem solver’ for a multitude of industries. It is already well-known as a supplier to aerospace and motorsport – such as the Force India F1 team. “The new facility will allow us to stretch our muscles and run: we’re gearing ourselves up to be a true technical partner to OE-type businesses – people like Rolls-Royce and Bentley,” he says. The company has already taken delivery of a new autoclave, and CNC machinery from Italy. And there is also a real emphasis on education: the new facility has a classroom, for the benefit of NVQ trainees. “We also have eight apprenticeships going through. We want to move to 20 each year afterwards,” he adds. And, of course, there is a new sense of scale: the new engineering office will seat 100 people, while the laminating shop and fitting areas are both three times bigger than at epm’s existing plant. Recently, the company has expanded from 75 to 95 people in the lead-up to full expansion. “We could have 150 people on each shift,” he says. One-off solutions The R&D capability is one that Mulholland believes will take the company into new areas. It will split into three categories: ‘productionising’ of composites, allowing customers to develop a production cell of their own; resin into fibres technology, looking further into processes like resin transfer moulding (RTM); and tooling know how. “We want to develop one-off solutions for customers,” he says of the first strand. “So, for an automotive company, we would devise a production cell and transfer it over to them. We’d love to carry on making the component – such as a fender or a bonnet – but in reality they want to do it themselves.” Mulholland says that this approach allows epm to ‘fast track’ a solution. “If it works, they’ll come back for more. And it presents composites as something other than a cottage industry.” The ‘resin into fibres’ research will try to analyse and understand every relevant process, from resin infusion to the use of high pressure steel tools. “We’d like to have a process chart on the wall – and understand every process on it. Once we’ve researched every one, we’ll know which is best for which part, and which volume.” The third strand, tooling, will attempt to stay on top of the need for increasingly complexity in mould tools. “We are making some quite complicated tools – and it’s only going to get more complicated,” says Mulholland. The company is researching all kinds of tooling, including prepreg, aluminium and steel. There is an increasing desire to optimise the performance of finished parts. However, having optimised finished parts does not always mean that the tool works well. And, according to Mulholland, this is likely to continue: the company recently took an order for “probably the most complicated” tool it has made in its 15-year history. Despite epm’s focus on the future, Mulholland says that the company is, in certain ways, very traditional. “We’re looking at knitted preforms, RTM and other stuff – but we are still doing prepreg because we think it’s important,” he says. “Prepregs are 25 years old, but we still see it as an R&D project.” Joined-up thinking He adds that the industry is often guilty of moving into new technologies – such as RTM and liquid infusion – before fully understanding them. As a consequence, a lot of R&D is done on the fly. “Our industry is a bit guilty of winning an order then doing the R&D live on a real customer application.” And he is convinced that there is still plenty of demand for established technologies. “I’ve seen an order from a company that wants 700 prepreg parts in many shapes and sizes every single month. That’s a massive application that will bring value and employ people. As an industry we can’t let that go abroad. We must grab these opportunities. Prepreg will be with us forever, but it might need some refinement.” And he admits that, of all the options open to the company, the expansion plan is the most difficult to achieve. “We’re hitting our sales targets, and could easily just take the money and run,” he concludes. “But this feels like the right thing to do: we are investing every penny we have to give ourselves a world class HQ.” www.epmtechnology.com