Ian Whateley and Chris Ball , both Advanced Chemical Etching
ACE bounces back from lockdown disruption to target £ 10m sales
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Telford precision engineering specialist is now trading 10 % above pre Covid-19 levels after it recorded its largest ever monthly intake of orders .
Advanced Chemical Etching ( ACE ), which employs 54 people at its facility at Hortonwood , has seen volumes in the automotive and aerospace sectors increase rapidly , alongside exciting new opportunities for its titanium , copper and aluminium etching expertise in the race for electrification .
The latter lends itself perfectly for battery interconnects , so important to the development of energy management in existing and future electric vehicles .
With turnover 30 % up on last year , the firm has also pressed the button on a new recruitment campaign to find several new production engineers .
“ The pandemic put us on pause , but we ’ re now seeing strong signs of growth with aerospace picking up and renewed interest for our manufacturing capabilities in automotive , electronics and medical ,” commented Ian Whateley , Managing Director at ACE .
“ Our sales are back above what we were doing at the start of 2020 and , interestingly , we ’ re doing a lot more in the EU , with 15 new clients already secured in Germany . Many of them are tapping into the lightweighting opportunities our etching can deliver and this is something we are actively looking to explore in the coming months .”
He continued : “ We ’ re looking to develop the business to hit £ 10m in three years and then £ 12m by 2026 . The process improvements we implemented during the lockdown have given us the capacity to manufacture well over 1000 sheets per day , that ’ s a 30 % increase from before we entered the pandemic .”
ACE specialises in the development of prototype components , pre-production and volume fulfilment to customers in aerospace , space , precision engineering , automotive , electronics , medical , telecoms and renewables .
The scope of its activities is far and wide and can include anything from safety critical components for aircraft and F1 cars to meshes and electronic connectors , battery interconnectors , fuel cell bi-polar plates and heat exchangers .
All parts are developed and manufactured at its main site in Telford or at the