Hardwood garden furniture manufacturer Woodfurn has spent £400,000 on a package of new machinery from Trymwood following a fire at its Thornbury factory.
The firm lost equipment and most of its stock in the blaze at a time when it was under pressure from retailers to increase output.
After being out of production for several months, it started again with equipment lent by Trymwood Machinery.
Scarcity of specialist skills had always been a problem for Woodfurn, which sells its iroko designs through garden centres. So Trymwood Machinery specified technology to reduce reliance on manual input while maintaining quality at the firms new premises in Yate.
A major part of Woodfurn’s investment was a Pade fully automatic double round end tenoner, a Pade 4+4 multi-head oscillating slot morticer and a Pade Uinze linear shaper, which has sanding units working both sides of chair legs to produce the finished product in a single pass.
The operation previously required the component piece to be bandsawed out, manually fed round the ring fence on a moulder and sanded on a linisher and bobbin sander.
A refurbished upcut saw with digital programmable stop, a Viet Challenge 323 triple widebelt sander, a Paoloni heavy-duty spindle moulder plus some refurbished edge linishing and drilling units were also specified.
Mike Farrington of Woodfurn said the investment had transformed production capability and increased capacity for future expansion without the need to invest in more labour.
