The heavy-duty brake manufacturer Twiflex, part of the global Altra group, has moved its manufacturing base from Twickenham, Greater London, to Bedford, providing better access to road and airfreight routes. At the same time, Twiflex has opened a sales, administration and technical support centre in Twickenham, keeping its staff and contact telephone numbers.

The Bedford premises is owned by Altra, unlike the previous site, which was leased. Twiflex will share it with two Altra clutch businesses, Wichita and Stieber. Altra has made a significant investment in new machine tools, planning, training and logistics for the larger and more flexible manufacturing facility that can accommodate all of Twiflex’s products.

The move had been discussed for several years, but the relative lull in orders during 2009 presented the ideal opportunity to put the plans into action.

“We were extremely fortunate to get the timing right for this move,” says sales director, Jonathan Cooksley. “Order levels bounced back significantly in 2010, growing by over 23% just as we completed the manufacturing changeover.”

New multi-axis CNC machines have been integrated into an efficient lean manufacturing process, based on multi-disciplinary manufacturing cells with the capacity to match the increase in demand.

Almost 80% of Twiflex sales are exported, mostly to heavy-industry customers in the mining, marine and utility sectors.