Cash boosts Meta l air by Bryan Jarvis • After six months
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and an initial £500,000 investment by Metalair's new owner Feldbinder, the Sutton Bridge road tanker factory has taken on a new look.
The Metalair Feldbinder regime now concentrates on aluminium bulk powder containers and tipping powder tankers for home and export. It also finishes off tankers made at Feldbinder's two German factories: Winsen, which is responsible for tipping and non-tipping powder tankers, tank containers, material procurement and design; and Wittenberg, which makes stainlesssteel liquid tankers and rail wagons.
Metalair Feldbinder managing director Chris Ansbach says: "Already our production is 50% up on this time last year, and the group has a strong order book looking three to four months ahead."
MF has a staff of 100 but with more than 200 tank containers going through the plant, 90 of them sugar carriers, the company is in urgent need of more specialist welders.
TIP has ordered 50 units, including 25 12m (40ft) boxes and 10 9.1m (30ft) boxes. Ten are pressurised containers and five are made to British Sugar specification.
The Sutton Bridge factory is completing around 30 units a month; mainly boxes, but road tankers are on the increase.
A number of tipping and non-tipping tankers are on order, mainly for contractors to British Sugar, which is showing more interest in pressure discharge tankers. Early users include Turners (Soham), which has a pair of 41m3 trailers. Claimed benefits include faster discharge, extra payload and lower running costs.
Other jobs going through the factory include six 36m3 tankers for Tate & Lyle. These are designed primarily for pressure discharge but they can also tip via an Edbro front ram and hand-operated rear butterfly valve.
Based on the Metalair fabricated two-piece aluminium chassis, the Tate & Lyle tankers feature a single nose hatch for loading at 330 and Crypta locking of the rear outlets to prevent interference with the product.