Altra invests £1m in Twiflex factory move

Altra announced it had made a £1 million investment in new machine tools, planning, training and logistics to achieve a much larger and more flexible manufacturing facility that can accommodate the full range of Twiflex products, plus a wide range of clutches and brakes from allied Altra brands Wichita and Stieber. Twiflex moved the facility from Twickenham in Greater London to Bedford, providing, it said, better access to road and airfreight routes. The Bedford site is also owned by Altra, as opposed to the previous Twickenham which was leased, but retains its sales, administration and technical support centre in Twickenham. The move had been under discussion for over three years; however, an extremely busy production period had prevented the move being practical before now. Sales director Jonathan Cooksley said: "We were extremely fortunate to get the timing right for this move, order levels have bounced back significantly in 2010, growing by over 23% just as we completed the manufacturing changeover. The new multi-axis combination CNC machines have been integrated into an extremely efficient lean manufacturing process, based around multi-disciplinary manufacturing cells that now provide the engineering capacity to match the increase in production demand." The Bedford production site is one of eight Altra manufacturing plants within the EU, each of which is linked to the Altra global sales network and operates under the Altra lean production system which ensures both product performance, quality and availability of product to an international market are guaranteed.