Craig Vickers, Managing Director and Divisional Head Europe: I don’t normally like to make big speeches or statements but as we start 2024, I feel so enthused and energized about the prospects for the year ahead, I wanted to share some of our news and intentions with our customers, suppliers and industry partners. So, please permit me to take up a few minutes of your time with this short piece to let you know about our plans.
For those of you who don’t know, ARRK’s parent company is Mitsui Chemicals, a global company with a multi-billion-euro turnover. Being part of a group like this clearly brings stability and confidence for us as a business, our employees, but equally for customers and suppliers as you look to work with well-established, robust partners. This solid foundation allows ARRK to look forward and plan for the future, ensuring that the range of services, technologies and processes we provide are aligned with customer needs, now and ongoing.
We are proud of the fact that ARRK works with a wide range of customers big and small, across Europe but also globally. You are very important to us and we appreciate all of you! ARRK has a number of manufacturing sites in Europe, and we work closely together to ensure customer needs are met. Subject to your specific project or programme requirements we can call upon our group capability, capacity and expertise from our EU sites to deliver a solution.
I am honoured to lead our manufacturing operations in France, Spain and the UK. Each site looks after specific territories offering our core services. At the same time each site has its own specialist capability, therefore a strong portfolio – but we believe we can offer even more!
Of course, a business is nothing without its people and we are blessed to have teams of highly motivated and experienced professionals. I am now happy to report and welcome our Composite and Engineering team from Nuneaton into our divisional set up. Although already part of ARRK Europe Ltd in the UK, this site was previously in a different division within ARRK Corporation. Now they are part of our team and a valuable addition to our comprehensive offering.
We’ve made some other divisional changes within ARRK, creating a much closer and cohesive relationship with our key manufacturing ARRK sites in China. Specifically aimed at injection mould tooling and moulding, this change will have major ongoing benefits for our European customers.
Investment continues into 2024
During 2023 we made investments across our sites, in a range of technologies that either further enhance what we do or added a new string to our bow. For instance, we added to our fleet of CNC machines in Gloucester along with some additional 3D printing technologies (CFF and DLP), which meant we were able to introduce new materials. We also improved our post processing capability with the purchase of Dyemansion equipment in SLS. In France we added the first Farsoon SLS machine to our existing fleet. On a much grander scale, 2023 also saw a significant refurbishment and refitting of our Nuneaton site. This gives us another firm base upon which to build. These are just some of the highlights and we have plans for further investment in new technologies, materials and processes in 2024.
The world is constantly changing, as are your demands. The drive for greater innovation, ensuring strong supply chains to deliver cost effective and reliable manufacturing solutions means ARRK is well placed to support. Our strategy is to invest, train and develop and constantly listen to you, our customer! With a team of professionals who go the extra mile, we firmly believe we have something special to offer. We look forward to supporting you all in 2024.
