Investment lays ground for record orders for Celab

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Mar 4, 2002

High-reliability power-supply specialist Celab enters the new financial year with a record order book of GBP 7.7 million, an increase of 40% on the position in January 2001.

High-reliability power-supply specialist Celab enters the new financial year with a record order book of GBP 7.7 million, an increase of 40% on the position in January 2001.

The company cites a GBP 250,000 investment programme in manufacturing processes and training as being key factors in winning several significant quantity orders, especially for Eurofighter and cable TV networks.

With engineering and prototype development orders also hitting record levels in 2001, Celab is confident that 2002 will continue the growth that has seen sales double in the last five years, and is forcasting sales growth of 50% for 2002.

"The well-publicised difficulties of telecomms markets have been offset by some major successes for our military business, underlining the importance of our balanced strategy", comments Barry Wood, Managing Director.

"Although we did increase our surface mount and ESS (environmental stress screening) capacity in 2001, the main focus of our investment programme has been in being smarter about what we do, and not just doing it quicker, with initiatives such as lean manufacturing already yielding valuable productivity benefits for our customers".

As an example of the successs of this approach, a programme to develop specialist automatic test systems has reduced some product test times from 4 hours to a few minutes, dramatically reducing costs, and increasing capacity.

Investment will continue in training and new manufacturing processes during 2002, with a GBP 300,000 programme aimed at further increasing the level of automation and developing the skills of existing staff.

Wood anticipates that this approach, combined with an increased use of outsourcing, will both increase the rewards for the current workforce, and enable the growth to be achieved without recruitment bottlenecks for the Bordon plant.