CastAlum Apprentice Graduation CastAlum's apprenticeship scheme continues to be one of the core components of the company, and we are pleased to announce the recent graduation of one of our apprentices. Nathan Field received a first class BSc honours degree in Computing and was awarded the British Computer Society Prize for his final year project on Responsive Web Design. Nathan has been with the company since 2009 and has now moved into the full-time position of IT Engineer.

CastAlum Investment CastAlum continues to invest in the future with the recent arrival of new machinery to support a major new contract for RDU components for Volkswagen & Audi vehicles. This includes three new horizontal machining centres (2 x MAG, 1 x Heller). A brand new 1,850 metric tonne Buhler Prince High Pressure Diecasting Cell with a new Striko Westhofen Tower Melting Furnace has also been installed. This equipment has also enabled twenty-one new jobs to be created for the local area.

Secretary of State for Wales visits CastAlum CastAlum was last week visited by the Secretary of State for Wales RT Hon. David Jones with representatives from the Mid Wales Manufacturing Board and Mid Wales Chamber of Commerce. Following a presentation of CastAlum’s current and future expansion plans, the Minister toured the works to review the significant investments that CastAlum has made over recent years. His opinion; that CastAlum are doing all of the things expected of a Company that is dedicated to expansion and continual improvement of products and processes. [...]

Chairman Peter Radcliffe Our Chairman Peter Radcliffe was awarded the Institute of Cast Metals Engineers highest accolade, the Oliver Stubbs medal, at the awards luncheon on Saturday 12th October. The award recognises services to the metals industry.

CastAlum Record Breakers Over a period of 6 months three of our employees: Karl Meredith – Production Manager Nick Spalding – Logistics Supervisor Steve Roberts – Toolroom Supervisor Rebuilt from the "wheels up" 2 BSA Bantam 125cc motor cycles. Their purpose – to attempt to break the world land speed records in their class at Bonneville Salt Flats. The outcome – 3 world records on their vintage machines that went progressively faster from the heats to the final runs. Described by all 3 participants as a "great adventure" the wonderful [...]

ICME Open Day On Tuesday 30 April, Castalum (in association with ICME) was proud to be the venue for an Open Day under the banner heading of “Training and Education for the Castings Industry”. There were approximately 30 attendees and the job profiles of those present ranged from Managing Directors, Training Managers and HR Professionals. Everyone who attended had one overriding question in common –“how do we continue to raise the profile of the Casting industry in order to make a lasting impact within the academic world”? CastAlum’s and the [...]

April 2013 In line with our targeted intent to keep pace with technology and to rely on only the best equipment to produce our components, Castalum continues to invest. In the last quarter of 2012 we installed an automatic Rossler shotblasting facility; at the end of the year we installed our latest Heller horizontal machining centre and in April 2013 we have placed an order for a 2000 tonne Buhler Prince die casting cell. This latest investment secures our capacity needs until 2014. At that point we plan for a [...]

Management Change On August 6th we executed a management succession change with Keith Brown moving into the role of Managing Director and Peter Radcliffe moving to Chairman. The changes to these senior positions were planned to be seamless to the operation of our expanding business. Everyone at Castalum wish Keith and Peter success in their new roles.

March 2012 CastAlum is already planning for it’s next influx of apprentices in the middle of the year. Working closely with the local community we will be taking on technical trainees to maintain the production line of skills that apprentices have provided in the past.

Bright Ideas The launch of the Bright Ideas campaign has seen a renewed enthusiasm in the number of Lean suggestions emanating from all associates. A Lean initiative has long been a feature of our operation but maintaining enthusiasm and generating improvement benefits is a difficult proposition. The new initiative, driven by operational management, encourages everyone to collect the brightly coloured forms from holders around the works and complete with a short brief to outline their improvement idea. Around three quarters of the mainly, small step, no cost, ideas are implemented [...]