TWI, CTI and NAMTEC stimulate growth in the UK forging industry

Rotary Forging
Courtesy of Bohler Uddeholm

Toolform, one of the UK's most ambitious engineering programmes in recent months has just been completed by three Sheffield based metal technology specialists.

Funded by the DTI, Yorkshire Forward and Objective 1, the project has brought TWI into partnership with Castings Technology International (CTI) and the Nationals Metals Technology Centre, known as NAMTEC.

The remit of the ToolForm programme has been to help the UK forging industry, either directly or indirectly, to increase the national market in forged components.

34 projects were taken up within the total programme.

Most of the targets have now been either met or exceeded... among them:

65 jobs were safeguarded and 29 new jobs created
Increased sales of £30.5 million
317 companies using the developed technologies or benefiting from their application.

Among its objectives the Toolform programme also collected customer satisfaction comments and recorded the impact of the project on the workforces involved. The response was overwhelming. The consensus of the companies approached was that the new techniques, processes and assistance provided by the Toolform programme contributed significantly to improving the technical quality of the work. It also greatly enhanced employee job satisfaction.

The benefits of this project extend beyond its duration. It is expected that the technologies developed by TWI and CTI will continue to generate new opportunities.

A deeper appreciation of the many Toolform success stories to emerge from this project can be made through the individual cases studies at:

For further information, please contact: eliana.fu@twi.co.uk