precision engineering

Market Diversification – Burnside Autocyl’s Way of Dealing with Brexit

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The fact that it has pursued a market diversification strategy for over 30 years means Burnside Autocyl’s growth is unlikely to be unduly affected by Brexit.

Established in 1974 in Tullow, Co Carlow, Burnside Autocyl was focused on the domestic market for its first ten years and when it became saturated the UK was the logical first export market.

However, it soon recognised the potential that existed in other markets and so branched out into Scandinavian countries and then Germany, France, the Benelux countries, Italy, the Czech Republic and Romania followed after that.

Currently exporting into 16 different countries, its most recent venture was to establish a manufacturing and warehousing facility in Pennsylvania in the US – the company’s first global footprint outside Co Carlow in terms of manufacturing capability. It also has sales and marketing offices in Germany and France.

Sales DirectorBurnside Autocyl designs and manufactures customised hydraulic cylinders for original equipment manufacturers in the manual handling, construction and manufacturing sectors.

“In 2013, we identified the US as a market that we had to pursue with more gusto and so established a physical presence in 2014,” says sales director Caroline Kelly.

“It is a hugely exciting market for us, which we are looking to grow right now. We have already seen 10% growth in sales year on year.”

All of Burnside Autocyl’s product shipments to Europe are currently routed through the UK. This is a concern for the company post-Brexit, but a challenge it will overcome, according to Kelly.

“It may mean our shipments will have to be bonded. A lot of questions remain to be answered. At the same time, UK competitors are in a stronger position than us because of weaker sterling,” she says.

“However, we are not overly concerned about Brexit as the UK doesn’t make up a significant part of our overall business and we are confident about growing in other markets.”

 Learn how Enterprise Ireland’s Diversification supports can help you to develop market knowledge and prepare for the challenges of entering new markets.

Pointers on the French Market from Irish Business Tricel​​​​​​​

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France has become a key market for Killarney-based manufacturing firm Tricel since it obtained a government licence to supply sewage systems to one-off houses there in 2011. Here managing director Mike Stack shares his insights into the French market:

• France is a gigantic market and you really have to commit resources to it. You can’t just dip your toes in and expect to be successful. The language is hugely important. You need people working for you that speak French. We have strong local teams on the ground, which has been very important. People from your company just arriving over once every couple of weeks won’t cut it. There has to be a local support network in the country.

• Having a base in France – our factory in Poitiers – has allowed us to pursue an expansion strategy into other European markets. Once we got established there, we found distributors in Belgium and then Germany. We are also focused on French-speaking markets such as Martinique and Guadeloupe now that we have built up the language capability.

• Building a strong brand has been important to us in France. Further to being awarded French and German trading licences (in 2011 and 2012, respectively) the Tricel brand for our environmental products became well established in those markets. This led us to the decision in 2014 to rebrand the whole company from Killarney Manufacturing Group to Tricel. It is quite a unique name globally and we have found since that it works well generally in international markets.

€1.5 billion in cost savings show that Lean thinking works for Irish exporters

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Working from an island, as exporters must in Ireland, forces our businesses to be more competitive than those in the markets we sell to. The products and services that exporters develop here must offer customers more value than those of competitors. Irish exporters can’t just be good, they must be better. Recently, a milestone in achieving that ambition was realised.

More than 1,000 companies have now used Enterprise Ireland Lean Business supports to take practical steps to become more competitive and improve as exporters. While the outcome of the Brexit result increased urgency, competitiveness is not a new challenge for Irish business. Enterprise Ireland launched Lean programmes eight years ago, in response to the then financial crisis. Improving competitiveness can be a matter of survival in times of crisis but all companies benefit from learning how to increase profit margins, build skills, reduce waste and increase capacity.

Enterprise Ireland’s Lean Start, Plus and Transform programmes help companies at all levels of familiarity to find improvements, from design to manufacturing and service delivery, down to getting money lodged in the bank, through logistics and supply chain.

The results these first 1,000 companies have reported demonstrate that applying Lean thinking is a practical way to improve competitiveness, quickly. €1.5 billion in cost savings have been recorded. Lean thinking is also good for the domestic economy, with participating companies reporting a 10% increase in employment. Examples of what companies have achieved demonstrate the potential of Lean thinking for Irish exporters:

• Thermo Air, a manufacturer and distributor of air and heating systems, reduced costs by 8% after completing Lean Start, reporting, “The implementation of Lean has been a very positive beginning to a change in the mindset of our traditional manufacturing company. The future success of the business is on the right trajectory.” The application of Lean thinking enabled the company to reduce lead times from six to three weeks, multiplying the number of orders handled.

• NutriScience, a manufacturer and distributor of animal supplements, reports, “This initiative was a real game changer. We went from being a reactive follower to being a proactive driver.” The company achieved €176,000 in savings, at 8.6% of turnover. In addition to a more engaged workforce and a safer work environment, lead time was reduced from an average of eight to a guaranteed three weeks.

• WhatClinic.com, a website that helps patients find clinics and book appointments, used Lean Start to implement a pre-sales process that boosted new business by 15% and increased their renewal rate to over 85%.

These examples show how practical Lean thinking programmes are. High-level thinking has been transformed into useful tactics that help companies improve today. The range of companies applying Lean thinking was clear at an event Enterprise Ireland recently co-hosted with the IDA in Maynooth. Speakers included representatives from the smallest companies to internationally award-winning practitioners. The depth of understanding attendees displayed shows that Lean thinking has been fully absorbed in Ireland. Experts travel to Ireland to learn about initiatives SMEs here are implementing. This December two Irish companies, Phonovation and Topflight, will host visitors from the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Co-operation as part of a Lean in Europe series of best practice visits.

Reaching 1,000 projects is a high level of adoption but Enterprise Ireland aims to see that figure quadrupled. The take-up rate of Lean Start, Plus and Transform is rising as companies that see initial results progress further and companies yet to start feel the urgency of not being left behind. Other Irish agencies are keen to replicate the success Enterprise Ireland-backed companies have achieved. The IDA and Local Enterprise Offices implemented programmes that show how Lean thinking can be applied to make major competitiveness improvements for both multinationals and smaller regional companies. Teagasc and Bord Bia are planning similar initiatives.

Companies that are interested in joining a programme should visit the Lean Business Ireland website to find detailed information about supports and get inspired by nearly one hundred case studies that show the savings and sales lean is already helping competitors to achieve.

Ceramicx – Using Technology Transfer for New Product Development

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“Licensing new technology has enabled Ceramicx to develop cutting-edge innovation that will power the company’s latest wave of international growth.”

The Aston Martin BD9 touring car contains aluminium panels alongside fibre-reinforced plastic panels that are bound together with super-strength adhesive, developed by Irish company Ceramicx through an infrared heating process.

The West Cork-based company is now announcing a world-first in launching the Herschel, a machine that measures and maps infrared heating.

“Infrared is invisible, of course, so it’s a hard thing to quantify. Usually people measure infrared output as the heat produced as a secondary reaction, but the Herschel maps the output of an emitter in watts [power] per cm2,” explains Cathal Wilson, director at Ceramicx.

The technology, first pioneered at Trinity College Dublin’s Manufacturing Research Facility, is named after William Herschel, the German-born astronomer who moved to Britain in the eighteenth century and became famous for his large telescopes. He also discovered infrared radiation and the planet Uranus.

The licensing deal with Ceramicx and subsequent process of technology transfer was the fruit of an Innovation Partnership, part funded by Enterprise Ireland. In turn, it has unleashed a new avenue for international sales for the West Cork company.

Ceramicx is up-skilling its staff of 63 and preparing to double its floor space, adding further labs, offices and manufacturing capacity. The Ballydehob firm is no newbie, though. The company has been perfecting its infrared heat work for 25 years, and it exports to 65 countries, with key markets being China, Germany, UK and the US.

Ceramicx will use the breakthrough technology to further refine the infrared heaters and ovens it develops in-house for food and other manufacturers. But the company also expects demand for Herschel as a test instrument for large companies that rely on infrared energy in manufacturing.

Like baking a cake, there is a heat recipe in every material, and there are a number of variables that must be controlled to get the best, most efficient and most cost-effective solution. The Herschel will allow manufacturers to refine the dial on their heat recipe with amazing precision.

“There are probably five or six major companies in the world that would be interested in this new technology,” Wilson says. These include the likes of Corning Glass, European Aerospace, Boeing and leading-edge tech companies serving likes of NASA.

The company came to realise the need for a machine like Herschel after it had worked through a challenging assignment developing a finished oven for Corning Inc., the makers of the Gorilla Glass used in mobile devices such as the Apple and Samsung smartphones. A curved piece of glass 0.7mm-thick was required, and the initial calculation and trial stages of the glass finishing project engaged five Ceramicx engineers for over a week. “If I had been able to put the problem in front of the Herschel, I could essentially have had the figures immediately,” Wilson explains.

Within its own processes, the machine is enabling Ceramicx to create more energy efficient thermoforming machines for industry.

Another application is in the production of energy efficient ovens for manufacturers of foods such as biscuits, cereals and pizzas. Ceramicx has developed 12 food-industry related patents for Black and Decker, and the Irish company holds the commercial rights for the application of these patents in industrial-scale projects in Europe.

In the case of the Aston Martin BD9, Ceramicx designed and built not only a radiant infrared emitter, but it came up with the best possible solution so that the energy would be adequately absorbed, and the cure would take place in sympathy with the best chemical and mechanical characteristic of the bond. The result is an adhesive bond stronger than a weld, explains Wilson.

Commenting on the impact of Herschel, Cathal’s father, Ceramicx founder and managing director Frank Wilson observes: “For thousands of years, man has played with steel, trying out various heat works to it to make it suitable for certain jobs. In recent years, the plastics industry and other materials sectors have begun to realise that there is a whole range of heat work that can also be applied to improve the performance these materials also.” For these industries, he says, the benefits will be immeasurable.