Tufcot are a Sheffield manufacturing success story, with over 50 staff and big expansion plans in place. This month, unLTD sat down with their technical team to hear about their roles and discover what makes them stand out in their sector.
Tufcot manufacture their own bespoke composite material from synthetic fibres and thermosetting resins which are primarily used in the marine, railway and mining/oil/gas industries. They have had an incredibly successful 12 months, refining their offer to increase profits and grow their client base, which has enabled them to purchase the site next door in order to facilitate an enormous expansion.
We met up with the key members of the technical team; Justin Krebs (Operations Manager), Carl Buddery (Engineering Manager) and Luke Chadbourne (Technical Sales) as well as Sheffield Uni intern Alex Santini to find out about their roles and how they had helped shaped the success of the company.
JK: So I’m the operations manager and I’ve been here 5 years now, with 20 years experience in the composites industry. I’ve worked with the main players in this industry working in technical sales through to production management. Here, I’m a bit of a jack of all trades so I get involved in almost everything, whether that’s helping the guys work out the calculations on the technical side or problem solving and trouble shooting in production. Then there’s designing and developing new tools that are bespoke not just Tufcot but the whole industry. So it’s a broad role; hectic, but enjoyable.
CB: I’ve been here just over two years and in the industry 20 years. I’m the engineering manager and have responsibility for all major technical decisions so I need to know all about the materials, their properties, applications and where they can and can’t be used. That’s 60% of my role here while the other 40% involves helping with the quotations and supporting existing customers as well as developing new ones.
JK: We’d both worked together before so we know the industry well and it’s a different culture here, it’s very employee focussed. There aren’t many companies that are genuinely family businesses – some might claim they are – but I’ve been around the block and not many follow that through. But I tell people that come to join the business that this is a genuine family-run business with a real family mindset.
LC: I’m a technical sales engineer and I’ll do a lot of the technical drawings and bearing calculations – so I’ll talk to customers like Carl about the applications. I’ve been here six years now and I’d definitely echo what they have said about the positive environment here.
JK: Really the sales aspect of the team is right here in this office. We’re selling a solution to a problem rather than a specific product so what comes with that might be Carl’s 20 years of engineering knowledge or a team effort in the drawings and calculations or even my knowledge of how to solve a problem and make something another supplier can’t.
AS: I’m here for four months and while there’s some shadowing of course I have also been getting involved in my own work too, such as research projects about the materials. I’m really enjoying it and while I’ve been studying engineering for three years, working in the industry is definitely very different.
CB: We like to have placements to help out the University and I try to make sure they don’t just come in to sit in the corner on their own and work on a project in the dark. Alex has been all around the company seeing every department to get a feel of the end-to-end business.
State of the Sector
Carl talks us through the key challenges in their business at the moment…
“Energy prices. Not only in terms of our internal bills but all our raw materials are derived from the oil industry so material prices are increasing at the same time. We’ve combatted that well and managed to hold our prices these last two years by using efficiencies, reducing energy consumption and negotiating hard with our suppliers. Some of it we’ve had to absorb though and if a customer has a quote from 2022, we’ll honour it.
“We’re getting busier too which is a good thing but it does present the challenge of staying on top of lead times. We need new people in the factory, so finding good technical people is a also sometimes a challenge.
“There are also lots of other materials out there that we are in quoting against and that’s getting more competitive. Lead times are critical to a number of our clients so it can be frustrating that when we give an honest assessment of say six weeks for delivery and someone else promises five, then the customer will go for that, whether realistically they can meet it or not.
“We’ve also been working on approvals in the marine industry a great deal recently which is essential for technical insurance reasons. And where we had one approval needed two years ago, now we have 10 and we’re already seeing the benefit of that by getting customers we wouldn’t have had without them. That’s been a big plus for the business.”
