Westley Group: 200 Years of Excellence in Industrial Solutions
Westley Group forges ahead
Westley Group continues its winning formula
Westley Group is one of Europe’s largest non-ferrous and ferrous foundry and engineering groups, employing over 250 people across three UK-based manufacturing centres of excellence. Westley Group is the parent company of five divisions specialising in the manufacture and complete supply of heat, wear and corrosionresistant components for use in a wide range of critical industrial applications.
The Group’s five divisions specialise in sand castings, centrifugal castings, finish machining, assembly and supply chain led solutions. Its customers range from small engineering companies to global blue-chip organisations and prime contractors alike. Its customers have the benefit of the combined resources of all Westley Group companies available to them, thus benefiting from an unrivalled pool of technical knowledge and manufacturing exper tise.
To accompany Westley Group’s ongoing success the group will be celebrating its bicentenary in 2018 marking 200 years of supplying high quality cast products to a wide range of market sectors and applications. Since its inception the company has understandably transformed itself in both its core competencies and manufacturing capability to become the business it is today; continued investment in plant and equipment and its skilled and dedicated workforce ensures the group stays at the forefront of its industry and fully aligns itself with its customer’s needs. This includes the development of strategic partnerships to allow Westley Group to supply forged alloy products as part of its scope of supply and enable its customers to place contracts covering multiple product forms; combined with its in-house machining, assembly and test facilities Westley Group is able to offer a complete supply chain management service.
Recent investments in its machining services division, to extend its ver tical boring and large turning capabilities, and to improve its component inspection facilities, have been underpinned by a company-wide focus on continuous improvement strategies and the full implementation of 6S philosophies to sustain its ever improving manufacturing efficiency. They also support recent investments in the foundry operations to upscale its maximum size capabilities; the Spunalloys Division is able to cast centrifugal castings up to 12 tonnes in weight and over five metres in length.
Westley Group’s continued success in the supply of high-integrity, engineered products is due to its emphasis on quality, on-time deliver y and finish machining and assembly solutions; its knowledge and expertise is globally recognised and enables the Group to supply throughout the UK and Europe, the Far East, the USA and beyond. Westley Group is a leading supplier to the UK Ministry of Defence and its prime naval defence contractors and associated supply chain, including Wärtsilä, Babcock International, Rolls-Royce Submarines, BAE Systems Maritime and GE Power.
One of the strengths of the group is the diversity of the markets it serves, these range from the supply of materials to stockists and re-sellers to the supply of fully machined, assembled and tested level one components to critical applications in the naval defence, nuclear and aerospace markets. The marine sector has been a particular growth area for the business over the past years, but with the recent slow-down in the commercial marine market the naval defence market has provided a significant growth area both from a UK perspective and the company’s targeted expor t markets. The latter has been supported by regular attendance at leading trade shows, including SMM (Hamburg); SeaAirSpace (USA) and International Workboat Show (USA) to name a few. Westley Group will continue this approach in 2017 and is already booked into UDT (Bremen) and Intersec (Dubai).
A further strategic development is the pending formation of Westley Defence, a new division of Westley Group and incorporating a fully owned and autonomous US incorporated business, Westley Defense Inc.
This development aims to provide a focus and conduit for the supply of high integrity materials packages and engineered products to the organisation’s existing naval defence customers and growing prospects in key expor t markets. The setting up of a US business recognises the recent Westley Group successes in supplying this market and the excellent growth potential that exists on the back of these contracts.
The inclusion of forged alloy products into the Westley Group product portfolio, and sold through Westley Defence division, recognises the increasing demand for these products to support through life costs targets and complement more traditional cast products. It should be remembered that the use of centrifugally spun products, in place of forgings and where shape requirements permit, can offer very similar mechanical properties at commercially competitive prices; this emphasises the benefit of par tnering with Westley Group based on the group’s ability to supply multi-form product packages that meet any customer material selection policy.
Further potential growth in Westley Group, including capacity and capability improvements, is afforded by its focus on strategic acquisitions to complement its existing fully vertically integrated manufacturing resource; whilst also strengthening its engineering skills through the gaining of highly skilled engineers as a consequence of these acquisitions. 2017 promises to be an exciting and pivotal year for Westley Group based on current strategic developments and its longer term plans; Westley Group is a forward thinking and dynamic organisation that puts quality and customer service at the hear t of all it does.
Westley Group
Services: Foundry and engineering