Castle Precision Engineering was presented with The Manufacturer of the Year Award at a ceremony at the firm’s Glasgow factory last week, attended by 125 staff and key customers.
Chairman Marcus Tiefenbrun, whose father founded Castle Precision as a textile engineering company in 1951, and director Yan Tiefenbrun were presented with the Manufacturer of the Year award and the award for Best Small and Medium Sized Enterprise on Monday January 24.
Gordon Macrae, business development manager at wire fastening manufacturer Gripple, presented the SME award and The Manufacturer’s Will Stirling presented the overall winner’s award to the directors in front of 125 employees and representatives from customers Rolls-Royce and Selex Galileo.
“Despite being one of the most difficult years for industry in living memory, we can look back on 2010 with great pride,” said Marcus Tiefenbrun.
“It will be remembered… for the demonstration of our strong culture that took the downturn not as a hindrance, but as an opportunity, to make step change improvements in the company through investment in capital, training, our own continuous improvement programme and involvement in industry change programmes.
“For Castle this award is an acknowledgement to the professionalism, skill and excellence that we apply to every aspect of our business,” he added.
Turnover and profits at the company fell last year. Mr Tiefenbrun attributed this partly to further delays to the Boeing 777 Dreamliner programme which has left several aerospace manufacturers in the UK with holes in their order books.
Despite the setbacks, Castle Precision beat off strong competition from a field of over 120 award entries, edging out runner up Xtrac, the Berkshire-based advanced gearbox manufacturer, for the top prize in the magazine’s annual awards in November 2010.
Also present at the ceremony were representatives from some of Castle’s key partners, including aerospace and defence trade association ADS, Scottish Enterprise, Blue Moon Consultancy, Integrity Matters, Mori Seiki, the Scottish Manufacturing Advisory Service, Semta and Anniesland College in Glasgow.
Yan Tiefenbrun, a time-served apprentice and company director, is working with Anniesland College on developing a manufacturing degree course, specific to the theory and operations of precision engineering.
Castle Precision also holds the SC21 Bronze award, an aerospace industry supply chain operational standard, and is working on achieving the near mythical SC21 Gold award.
picture shows from Left Gordon Macrae of Gripple, Yan and Marcus Tiefenbrun, and Will Stirling of The Manufacturer
