Thursday, 7 October 2021
As a manufacturing business that has its 50th anniversary in the next couple of years, Amcanu knows more than most about overcoming challenges to achieve long-term success.
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As a manufacturing business that has its 50th anniversary in the next couple of years, Amcanu knows more than most about overcoming challenges to achieve long-term success.
Started by its founder Spencer Davies OBE back in 1975 the company began life as Spencer Davies Engineering. From humble beginnings we grew, winning contracts, employing more staff until the factory became the largest employer in the town. Over the following decades, numerous challenges have tested the team but still the company has continued to evolve and succeed. What’s the secret?
As a family business, with the third generation now learning the ropes, inspiring the young engineers of the future has always been an intrinsic part of what makes the business work. Many of our longest-standing employees started out as apprentices and we still regularly take on and train young school-leavers.
“Nothing beats being on the shop floor for gaining practical experience – I did this myself when I joined the company. From receiving materials into the factory to delivering products to customers … and everything in between. I worked in each area of the business so when my time came to be in charge I knew how everything worked.”
Owain Davies, MD
Amcanu takes real pride in spotting young people with potential and has always had an active apprenticeship programme run in partnership with Coleg Sir Gâr. It combines practical experience with classroom learning to build skills but also to work towards a formal qualification. Young people introduce fresh ideas and new ways of working, that bring great benefits to the business. For example, we’ve recently explored working with robotics, which may have taken a lot longer without the encouragement of our younger team members!
Our current apprentices Rhys and Dan at work.
The younger members of our team may keep us on our toes but our real strength is in our size, attitude and values. We’re small enough to act quickly without bureaucracy but big enough to be able to support the ambitions of like-minded customers. The people we work with appreciate this. One of our customers, DXB Pump & Power, have only been around for a few a years but with an MD who’s been in the market for decades it didn’t take long for them to make a big impact.
We’re a perfect partner for companies that want support to grow, and appreciate the flexibility of small skilled team. We’ve an informal approach and customers have easy access to be able to talk to any member of our team to share ideas.
“I used to be a small shareholder in company we built to several hundred people. Now I’ve started again with a small family business, I don’t want to be massive. I want to deal with people I like, both on a supply chain and customer level. That’s one of the other reasons I’m working with Amcanu because they’re a family-run business. They’re good people to work with and I want to work with good people”
Simon Ruffles, MD, DXB Pump & Power
DXB enclosure ready to be shipped out.
Life is all about dealing with problems and Amcanu has the attitude that every problem is an opportunity. Whether it’s Brexit, a design challenge, the pandemic, new legislation or the impact of the environment – we simply adapt our approach and evolve.
In terms of customers Brexit hasn’t had a negative impact so far. In reality it’s increased our UK customer base as more people searched for UK suppliers for their enclosures, rather than go through the pain of sending work out to the EU. We’ve also worked hard to go beyond the EU and develop new markets in Australia and New Zealand. This has proved successful and is something we’re keen to develop further in the future. Our enclosures sent out to Australia will have been put through their paces in the severe floods there in 2021. We think there is big market for our industrial enclosures in remote, harsh environments. Our products have been designed to withstand sand, salt, water, wind – pretty much anything nature can throw at them – and still look good. Crucial for our customers.
We consider ourselves masters of metal with industrial enclosures being our bread and butter – our current capacity allows us to build up to 50 enclosures every month. New technology and lean manufacturing principles means that this is forever growing.
Enclosures in any brand colour, no colour too crazy for our powder-coating plant!
In addition, in recent years we’ve developed new technology enclosures to sit in the most pristine AM (Advanced Manufacturing) environments. At the moment we’re working closely with a fantastic start up company, Wayland Additive, to design and built a totally bespoke enclosure to optimise the performance of their electron-beam based technology.
Ergonomically designed with rounded corners to look good in any AM environment.
This is cutting-edge technology and has been an amazing design challenge for our team.
“To say we are delighted with the result is an understatement, and we feel that the team at Amcanu has perfectly balanced the requirements for safety, ease-of-use, maintenance, and aesthetics in an extraordinary way.”
Will Richardson, CEO, Wayland Additive
We’re also working on smaller more bespoke projects creating charging points for electric vehicles, which is undoubtedly going to be a huge area to explore in the future with the ambition to ban the production of diesel and petrol cars by 2030.
We would not have been able to develop new products or increase our production capacity without constantly upgrading and investing in our factory. Over the past ten years we’ve upgraded and installed a state of the art powder-coating plant, a Bystronic Xpert 80 and Xpert 150 press brake, a BySprint 4020 Fibre laser as well adopting the latest industry 4.0 principles.
We’re not interested in gadgets for the sake of it, we’ve still got lots of machinery (and staff!) that have been around for decades. But we do believe in gradual, sensible improvements that mean we can offer customers the best possible products and exceptional service.
Owain believes in less talk and more action! Waiting for someone else, whether it’s Welsh Government, a supplier or a delivery company, to help you out can be a fruitless task.
“Part of being positive in business is about taking control and owning your situation. I don’t believe in waiting for someone else to wave a magic wand. We take a problem and turn into an opportunity.”
Owain Davies, MD, Amcanu
With Aron, Owain’s son now a constant presence on the shop floor and Michelle, Owain’s wife in the office, the family are looking forward to the challenges and opportunities ahead. And, despite retiring from day-to-day operations several years ago, Spencer can still be found from time to time on the shop floor checking in on the business he started almost 5 decades ago.
“I’m so proud that my grandson, the next generation, has decided to join the family business. There are always new opportunities for Amcanu on the horizon. I can’t wait to celebrate our 50 year anniversary in a few years time, what a milestone.”
Spencer Davies OBE, Chairman & Founder, Amcanu
There's a lot happening at Amcanu
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01554 833 358
info@amcanu.co.uk