_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ercol
gh
Ian shares how ercol’ s approach to British timber and UK manufacturing has helped the business navigate recent challenges.“ We’ ve experienced numerous disruptions across our supply chains over recent years, with the pandemic and increasing political instability,” he shares.“ Having a UK manufacturing operation has played to our advantage, enabling us to mitigate some of the impacts of this volatility. Between 2015 and 2020, we‘ ve invested close to £ 1.5 million in our UK manufacturing operation and have additional investment planned for the coming years, with around 50 percent of our manufacturing currently happening in the UK. The experiences of the last few years have reemphasized the power and benefits of UK manufacturing, and we’ re passionate about protecting these operations in the UK moving forward.”
With decades of furniture expertise, ercol blends its traditional handcrafted methods with more advanced machinery.“ Our current factory was purpose built in 2002, and it’ s not a typical furniture manufacturing plant,” Ian states.“ It features lots of glass, a wood fired boiler that processes waste timber, and it also won a RIBA award for best industrial building in the Southeast in 2002.”
In the years leading to 2020, ercol made significant investments to enable multiple machine operations within one setup and reduce changeover times. This has helped to manage increased complexity due to lower volumes and increased variety in demand. These machines allow ercol to utilize the workforce more effectively by freeing up time for secondary tasks, leading to improved productivity.
“ However, while we’ re investing in technologies and equipment to modernize our manufacturing processing in machining, some elements will always be handcrafted,” Ian says.“ Many aspects of our
manufacturing-today. com 231