Flatpack furniture manufacturer Shearform Components has spent up to £1.5m setting up a new factory in Huntingdon to help service its growing customer base.
The company, which supplies big retail names including MFI, Focus and Homebase, developed its third production site in the town from six existing buildings it previously used for storage. The units were converted into one building to give a floor area of 18,000ft.
The factory is now Shearform’s primary panel processing site and has a range of new machinery including a Selco angle plant, two Stream double-sided edgebanders, two Biesse CNC throughfeed drilling machines and RBO feeding and stacking technology.
Production director Steve Cook said existing capacity had not been able to keep pace with the growing customer base. The company’s £13m annual turnover is targeted to hit £16m by the year end.
A dust and woodwaste extraction system was sourced from Bradford-based CADES Ltd in a contract worth in excess of £100,000. It secured the deal after satisfying Shearform that its externally-sited chain filter modules could withstand the high easterly winds experienced in East Anglia.
The system comprises CWF 2020 DX 10+3HR Jørgen Hansen filters, four fansets (one 11kW, an 18kW and two 45kW), a system control panel incorporating built-in protection for fan motors and a Siemens S7200 programmable logic controller which flags up fault signals. Extraction capacity is rated at almost 70,000m3 per hour.
Dust and waste is transported to skips via 350m of CADES’s own flanged ductwork.
