Timber and builders merchant Sydenhams Ltd has enjoyed strong growth over the last decade. Sales have risen from £8m in 1993 to £42m in 2004, with timber products accounting for 50% of business.

Investment has been a key part of the company’s success but its latest spend – £750,000 on a new moulding facility – definitely ranks as one of its larger capital projects. Investing that amount on a key part of the business, it needed to work with the right people, and for everything to operate correctly, first time.

“We always invest well ahead of need and had identified that our existing mill here at Mislingford, Hampshire, needed to improve in terms of productivity, quality and turnround times,” said joint managing director Charles Sherbourne. “Our existing machinery was all hand-fed and, while the team on site was meeting all targets, we knew that we could make significant gains, providing we selected the right equipment.”

Sydenhams had already commenced the mill building works, but the rest of the package was prepared in discussions with Wadkin UltraCare. To date, the latter has probably been known best for its planned maintenance, repair and machine rebuild services – in fact, it now claims to be the UK’s leading provider of servicing and equipment to wood machinery users and has “strong ambitions to take the model forward across Europe”.

But another developing part of the UltraCare business is a turnkey-providing operation which creates total solutions for wood-processing installations. Managing director Peter Smith explained: “We offer a complete package to the client, including buildings, electrics, handling, stacking, wrapping or whatever is needed for that particular project. We have the capability to go from brownfield site right through to a full operation.”

Variety of sections

Mr Sherbourne continued: “We knew that the key element would be to select a moulding machine that could cater for a huge variety of sections, from small mouldings, right up to very large regularising work; that’s a tall order, especially when you also want to handle this variety [of product] automatically.”

Sydenhams’ demanding requirements also added to the specifications required in terms of handling, feeding and extraction systems. Machining anything from select softwood sideboards, right through to wet cedar or hardwoods, required a very strong and variable package.

In January 2004, UltraCare took on the project and the search went global, resulting in a detailed proposal from Iida Kogyo Co, based in Komaki, Japan.

“We have been marketing and supporting Iida machinery and knew they could offer the right package,” said Mr Smith. “The key to all of these arrangements is to ensure a long-term relationship to support the package. Confidence is everything and you need engineers who can install, commission and provide ongoing support for the life of the equipment.”

Iida has been producing moulding machinery for 63 years, even producing a 10-head machine capable of machining up to 5m in width.

Executive director Nick Imoto explained how the company’s relationship with UltraCare has developed: “Having worked with Wadkin UltraCare for nearly four years in the UK, we now work together in Europe with the aim of taking componentry from Japan and building to the customer’s precise specification.”

In February 2004, a Sydenhams team, headed by Charles Sherborne, visited Iida in Japan and finalised the specification for a six-head 100x300mm moulder. “The detail at this point was critical to ensure we had a machine that was capable of doing all that we needed,” said Mr Sherbourne.

Graham Stonehill, who manages the Mislingford site, also went to Japan. “We increased the motor specifications and as the machine has a motor for every feed unit, we felt confident that it could cope,” he said.

Wider planning

Meanwhile, planning was continuing on every other stage, from floor plan layout, extraction, electrics, handling, lighting, toolroom, wrapping line and, of course, the whole aspect of timing. “We needed to keep production going right up until the very last moment,” said Mr Stonehill, “which meant we were concreting around the existing moulder which ran right up until the last weekend; then we removed it, and concreted the new moulder plinth, all in one weekend.”

UltraCare project manager Steve Johnson “pretty well lived” at the mill during the operation to make sure it ran to time and budget. “The co-ordination of this machinery was extremely complicated, but it all came together perfectly,” he said.

Training on each aspect was also being developed so that the whole Sydenhams team would be able to operate the package correctly from day one. “We spent four days purely on tooling, as well as two weeks on the TM systems handling equipment to ensure that every person in the chain knew what to do,” said Mr Johnson.

In September 2004, the machinery arrived and in a strict two-week shutdown every piece of the package was installed, tested and run.

According to Sydenhams, the results speak for themselves. It says it has an extremely flexible planing and moulding line that requires less labour to produce significantly higher volumes of a vast array of sections.

The process starts in the toolroom, where a Wadkin NZ 300 flat bed grinder has been installed, together with the existing cutter grinding equipment. Blocks are set well in advance of the machining schedule and CAD/CAM template cutting is incorporated into the routine for fast, accurate moulding cutters.

The infeed roller system allows one sideloader to pre-load job packs, which then work towards the moulder, operating according to the production schedule. PAR sections are bulked together for rapid resetting.

The Iida moulder and the handling systems can cope with a throughput in excess of 90m/min, with one operative and a further assistant monitoring outflow and the strapping/wrapping line.

Extensive upgrading of the extraction system has been necessary and was carried out by AirPlants, in conjunction with UltraCare. An automated outfeed roller system allows the same sideloader to remove finished jobs in line with other work requirements.

Sydenhams says the new building and machinery package has the capacity on a single shift to cope with the company’s growth strategy. Further expansion could be managed with different shift patterns.