After twelve months construction work, Bunting’s European Managing Director Simon Ayling officially opened the extended Bunting-Redditch facility. The revamped facility includes additional manufacturing and storage space, a new ‘Customer Experience Centre’, and a third floor of offices.
“Despite delays and challenges due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we now have a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility, which is already providing the additional space needed to fulfil the growth in orders,” said Simon Ayling, Bunting’s European Managing Director.
The Bunting Group is one of the world’s leading designers and manufacturers of magnetic separators for the recycling and waste industries with manufacturing facilities in the USA and Europe. The Bunting European manufacturing facilities are in Redditch, just outside Birmingham, and Berkhamsted, both in the United Kingdom.
The facility investment programme increased both the manufacturing floor and office space by 50%. The additional manufacturing space is already being utilised by the production team manufacturing large orders such as a recent export project for one Eddy Current Separator and three (3) large ElectroMax Overband Magnets.
Figure 2 – The extended production facility
The staged construction work started with the replacement of the entire roof of the manufacturing plant. The next stage involved extending the manufacturing and stores areas. The final work focused on a new third floor of offices and a new ‘Customer Experience Centre’ where customers undertake tests on a wide range of magnetic separators, metal detectors, and electrostatic separators.
The ‘Customer Experience Centre’ is home to a state-of-the-art laboratory and is one of the most advanced for magnetic and electrostatic separation in the world. Companies processing and mining minerals, and recycling waste materials, send samples to the laboratory for controlled tests. The tests demonstrate what separation is possible, ultimately leading to the purchase of production-sized magnetic and electrostatic separators. The new ‘Customer Experience Centre’ is 300% larger than the previous testing area, incorporating an extended range of laboratory-scale equipment to handle the increased demand for material tests.
Figure 3 – New Bunting-Redditch Customer Experience Centre
The Customer Experience Centre features designated areas for both wet and dry testing on both high-intensity Magnetic Separators and ElectroStatic Separators. This latest investment in Bunting’s European laboratory facilities follows the creation of a Recycling Test Centre in February 2018.
“The facility expansion ensures we are able to meet the growing demand for our separators,” explained Simon. “We have a facility that accurately reflects our position as a global force in material separation technology.”
