Birmingham-based plastic injection moulding and toolmaking specialist Barkley Plastics is celebrating 60 years in business with a collection of new projects.
The new work includes controller parts and ambient lighting for a luxury high-end shower manufacturer, as well as car charger components for Fast Amps and environmentally friendly plumbing fittings for Ecoclip.
These latest wins – combined with its own ‘PlasFloor’ flooring tile range and ongoing interior trim and specialist lighting products orders from Nissan, Toyota, JLR and several supercar manufacturers - have helped the company bounce back from a difficult two years, with the firm now on course to turnover more than £4m and exciting plans in place to further increase revenues by 2026.
Expansion plans have been boosted by the £100,000 modernisation and streamlining of its Highgate facility to include several cobots for increased automation and a new temperature-controlled quality control room that houses two coordinate measurement machines and a vision scope system.
“Since Covid-19 there has been a lot of supply chain disruption and the automotive sector has been extremely volatile in terms of volumes,” explained Matt Harwood, who took over as Managing Director from his father Mark in 2022.
“Like before in our 60-year history, we’ve chosen to face these challenges head-on and are now in a position to target a significant amount of reshoring work that directly suits our technical plastic moulding expertise and the fact we have our own onsite toolroom.”
“Now that we have refined our factory and increased efficiency, we are in a perfect position to offer competitive prices and are determined to help bring more production back to the UK.”
With a fully equipped toolmaking facility within its moulding plant, Barkley Plastics can support its client base with initial design and product development, right through to manufacture and assembly, with over 30 modern moulding presses - ranging from 5 to 650 tonne - able to produce the most intricate of components weighing less than a gram right up to parts that are a metre squared and 2.5kg in weight.
Steve Smith, Operations Director at Barkley Plastics, commented: “The new contract with the luxury shower manufacturer is a perfect example of where we come into our own. We breathed new life into some of its near obsolete tooling, which gave them the confidence to give us the challenge of developing technical components and ambient lighting for their new product ranges.
“We quickly proved we could manufacture it to the quality and aesthetic finish required and, importantly, at a cost point that worked for them. I’m sure this would have gone overseas before we stepped in.”