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IF YOU KNEW
Page 56
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Although no one in the UK makes tractor units any more, a number of trailer manufacturers still fly the flag for Britain. Colin Barnett visits a UK company that is leading the world when it comes to joining tractors and trailers.
The Allen Group factory in Bodelwyddan. North Wales. provides flexible air lines for every marque of European and Japanese truck, with the sole exception of DaimlerChrysler, and quite a few more in the emerging markets.
Managing director John Usher recently gave CM a look behind the scenes—and revealed that Allen's history in the suzie market only dates back to 1982,when it was set up in Hemel Hempstead, Herts, to service the aftermarket.
A chance holiday encounter by today's chairman, GeraldTirley, led the company to relocate to its current premises in 1986;the new site is just off the A55,a few miles inland from the resort of Rhyl. In fact, if you sit at the right end of Allen's boardroom table, you can see attractive patches of shining sea where the view isn't marred by the windfarm.
In the early 1990s the group moved into the original-equipment (OE) market, but just as this was getting under way the plant was devastated by a major flre.Fortunately,Daf and Scania, which had by then signed supply deals, stood by Allen during the 10 months of disruption while the factory was rebuilt as Phoenix House.
Today, unde r the banners of Allen Pneumatic and Allen Electrical, the product range includes trailer chassis tubes, air and electrical suzies and, most recently, preformed pipes, mostly for fuel systems.
As well as the Welsh factory, which employs 160 workers on three shifts, Allen now has plants in China and India.The Indian factory, at Jamshedpur, some 100 miles from Calcutta, serves local manufacturers and Cummins, which is a major force in the region:The Chinese factory at Wuxi is also set to serve the burgeoning domestic market, as well as providing a springboard for the rest of Asia. Although the workforce is almost entirely composed of local labour, we bumped into Craig O'Connell, the group quality manager, excitedly preparing for a three-year secondment to Wuxi with his family.
Manufacturing processes Bodelwyddan is an archetypal production facility— raw materials, such as drums of plastic pellet and reels of copper wire, go in one end; product comes out the other. We were particularly impressed by the sight of plastic pipe being extruded at 220°C and passing through a long water cooling trough
before being wound into coils on a brand new £100,000 machine.The Allen Group produces around a million coils per year, as well as 100,000km of trailer chassis tubing.
Some of the techniques employed are intriguing, such as coiling electrical suzies in their reverse direction to maintain their shape. Some are more basic, such as mixing plastic granules with pigment granules in a conventional concrete mixer before being made into coloured cable sleeving.
In addition to its enviable position in the OE market,Allen claims about 40% of the UK replacement market. Asked how long suzies should last, Usher says the tube will easily last the life of the vehicle, as long as it is not abused.And there's the problem—which is compounded by the otherwise admirable trend to reduce coupling distances.
Sliding suzie frames, such as Allen's own Euroboom, can help, but the biggest problem is damage caused by tangling. Allen's answer is the Compact Coil, which features a much tighter winding with an internal diameter ofjust 40mm,greatly reducing the risk of entanglement. However, the DIN standard specifies the traditional diameter as one of its criteria, and the cost of lobbying for anew standard means the Compact Coil is unlikely to be an OF option in the foreseeable future.
Testing times
Allen has an active research and development section that looks at new products and handles intensive testing on existing ranges. For example, each suzie is tested to its design life of 10,000 articulations.The next new product is likely lobe a black air hose with coloured tracer.This should go some way to resolving the conflict between black, which has the best ultraviolet light resistance, and the red and yellow colours favoured by operators. Special products include large-diameter coils for trombone trailers and nested coils for drawbar rigs.
Allen products comply with the DIN74323 standard, but it is not unknown for unscrupulous overseas manufacturers to produce counterfeit coils complete with bogus DIN stamps, regardless of the grade of plastic used. Chinese counterfeiters have even copied Allen's logo, while some Indian cowboys simply copied its entire catalogue.
The trophy collection in the boardroom bears testimony to the firm's success, including a 'top supplier' award from Volvo. Queen's Awards wins range from the Export category in 1991 to the modern version, international Trade, in 2005. In what is generally seen as a post-industrial economy the Allen Group is a welcome reminder that British manufacturers are still able to carve out a niche and defend it against all-comers. •