Leicestershire-based Bowden Precision Engineering — a leading supplier to the aerospace, medical, marine and punch-and-die industries — says that its investments in technology and staff have enabled it to maintain its competitive edge in sub-contracting.

Director Paul Barnett said: “Our highly skilled workforce can tackle anything from a one-off copy of an existing part to a large quantity of complex components. Our aim is to ensure complete customer satisfaction by producing accurate work of excellent quality — on time and on budget.”

Bowden became part of the COBA International group in 2013, and it moved into a new purpose-built facility in 2014.

It currently employs nine people, including six CNC programmers.

“Finding skilled staff can be very difficult. By offering training to young people from local schools and colleges, we’re investing in the next generation of UK engineering and manufacturing talent.

We are also getting increasingly involved with our customers at the design and development stage of their projects.

“Although they are often very good at designing a 3-D model, they need assistance when it comes to manufacturing processes. Using a combination of SolidWorks and OneCNC, we help them to ‘design for manufacture’ so that their ideas can be produced more simply and more economically.”

“Mr Barnett says he attributes much of the company’s success to the fact that it has invested heavily in Haas CNC machines (www.haas.co.uk).

“In the last 18 months alone, we’ve installed three Haas mills and a Haas turning centre. It’s safe to say that they’ve become the backbone of our company as far as milling and turning are concerned.

“Haas machines offer the perfect balance between flexibility, quality and value. It’s an exciting time for Bowden. We’ve changed more in the last couple of years than in the previous 30.”