Karas Plating has announced that its new £1.5m fully automated, 2.4-metre-wide busbar electroplating line is now fully operational, adding major new capacity for high-volume silver plating in the UK and strengthening domestic supply chains for critical electrical components.
The investment expands the UK’s electroplating capabilities, helping manufacturers reshape and reshore critical supply chains by reducing reliance on overseas electroplating providers and securing high-quality, dependable capacity closer to home.
Built by Jacquet Weston Engineering with support from the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund, the new line can process up to 200kg of product every 20 minutes and gives Karas capacity to electroplate an additional 4,500 tonnes of copper busbars per year.
The line operates as an autonomous cell using LEAN principles and KPI-led performance management, enabling tight process control, high efficiency and reduced silver consumption.
Alongside the new line, Karas Plating can process components up to 4.2 metres in length, giving the company the widest dimensional silver-plating capacity in the UK and supporting growing demand from the automotive, data centre, electronics, power generation and renewable energy sectors.
Alan Pennington, Managing Director at Karas Plating, said: “This investment is about giving UK manufacturers a world-class domestic solution for a critical process that has too often been outsourced overseas. By expanding our capability here in the UK, we are helping customers reshore vital supply chains and improve resilience.
“We offer exceptional quality, and this line has been designed to deliver that standard at scale. The team runs as an autonomous cell with LEAN principles and clear KPIs in place, allowing us to operate with maximum efficiency, reduce silver consumption and maintain outstanding consistency.
“Manufacturers have too often been forced to accept visual standards from electroplaters around the world that fall short of modern expectations. We believe the market should expect better. Karas is delivering best-in-class busbar plating and is achieving a defect rate of fewer than five parts per million.”
With more than 70 years of experience in specialist busbar plating, Karas Plating continues to invest in advanced manufacturing capability from its facility in Greater Manchester.
