The Flowline factor

Stuga CNC Systems specialises in a range of cutting and prepping machinery and has a track record of meeting the needs of fabricators. The company often comes into contact with fabricators with a similar ethos to its own, concentrating on customers satisfaction and developing relationships over a period of time to the benefit of everyone involved. One such company was Britannia Windows of Clevedon, Somerset.

Britannia was successfully developing its business in the South West of England when it approached Stuga to discuss an interest in the Flowline cutting & prepping centre, which it had recognised as being likely to fulfil the needs of a significant move into automation.

At this time the Flowline was nearly one year old and six had been built and installed but the machine had never been used with pre-gasketted profiles. Britannia was using the Legend 70 system from Permacell Finesse with the fully extruded low line gaskets on all profiles and the question was whether the Flowline could handle this. As a result Stuga offered to develop the machine to do it. Britannia visited the Stuga manufacturing plant at Great Yarmouth in Norfolk and after seeing the engineering facilities decided that Stuga was likely to be the right company to work with on this project.

The machine was delivered six weeks later with new adaptations, and tests began. There followed several weeks of on-site developnent but in a reasonable time the Flowline was able to produce all cuts on the Legend system exactly as originally planned. The machine can cut and prep over 600 windows and doors per week with quality, accuracy and consistency, says Stuga. Since then another 40 machines have been built and installed by Stuga throughout the UK, many of them running pre-gasketted profiles.

Britannia has invested a total of £800,000 in new production equipment in less than two years.