How Can Brockhouse Help With Your Reshoring Activity?

Brockhouse Group Ltd is a UK manufacturer providing drop hammer, upsetters and stamping for all your forging needs, plus a range of post-forge services including heat treatment and finishing. Also specialising in die manufacture, with in-house CAD/CAM Design. With extensive post forge machining facilities, our aim is to provide a one-stop shop for component manufacture saving our customers time and money.

Throughout the Coronavirus outbreak, Brockhouse has successfully adapted its internal operating practises to meet the challenges posed by the impact of Covid-19, maintaining production output, that has met all client expectations.

With COVID-19 severely disrupting supply chains on a global scale Brockhouse is now actively working to assist companies in the reshoring of their production to the UK and get their businesses running smoothly once again whilst providing added resilience against future supply chain disruption.

Steve Chilvers, the Sales and Marketing Director at Brockhouse answered the following questions, of concern to every business considering reshoring production to the UK;

What type of companies can Brockhouse help?
We have experience working across a very wide range of industries. Our customer base includes, Agriculture, Automotive, Mining Oil & Gas and Nuclear to name but a few.

What services does Brockhouse offer?

We can provide closed die hammer and upset forgings alongside our technical, engineering and support capabilities. We have very sophisticated design and CAD / CAM systems that allows us to solve problems for customers quickly. We have the capability to take the process from design through die manufacture, production, heat treatment and post process machining. All within the controls of our QMS and ISO 9001.

How has Brockhouse managed to sustain production amidst the lock-down?
Our first priority was to secure the safety of our staff. We worked very quickly to ensure our employees remained safe and knew how to protect themselves. We then adapted our production processes to ensure that we met all Government guidelines and with our valued staff secure and confident we were able not only to maintain production levels, but recognising the demands that the pandemic has placed on our customers we have also worked hard to improve the service that we offer to support the changing needs of UK manufacturing.

What can Brockhouse do to help with the reshoring process?
With our deep understanding of forgings across a very wide range of industries combined with our technical capabilities and experience means we are able to provide specialised guidance to help transition production to our facilities. Our Engineering team works closely with customers to ensure the process is managed to achieve the required production and quality standards. We’re with the customer, every step of the way.

What are the benefits of having production in the UK?The pandemic has really highlighted the risks, costs and inflexibility of an extended supply chain. Working with the Brockhouse team to reshore production to the UK from countries such as India and China will enable our customers to improve their response times to the end customer. Engineering change will be quicker and easier to implement and of course there are the financial benefits. Total cost of acquisition can reduce and of course with less ‘stock on the water’ the cash benefits are obvious.
How do you see the UK manufacturing landscape changing in the short term?This has been a very challenging time for UK manufacturing. The pandemic has very sadly led to the demise of many companies that have not been able to adapt to the rapidly changing environment. I think that as we start to see the broader economy open up again, manufacturers that have adapted, that have been able to enter new markets or become more able to respond to these conditions, will need to continue this work. Weaknesses that have been exposed will continue to drive even more change. More companies will question their extended supply chains, their inability to react and of course the costs and cash associated with all of these issues. Brockhouse has shown its ability to work through these issues and is already helping its existing and new customers to also manage their way back to sustainability and profitable growth.