County Durham-based Ronco Engineering — a precision engineering company that numbers Caterpillar, JCB and Calsonic Kansei among its customers — is planning to add more than £1 million to its order book, thanks to a £100,000 investment from UK Steel Enterprise (UKSE) (www.uksteelenterprise.co.uk).

This has enabled itto install new machinery that has improved efficiency and brought immediate results.

With more than 20 years’ experience in precision component engineering, Ronco is renowned for its wide spectrum of engineering services, covering design to production for high-volume contracts or small batches, plus prototypes and specialist items such as pivot pins.

David Steel, managing director (www.ronco-engineering.com), said: “The investment from UKSE has taken us from a predominantly manual to a fully automatic production process to meet the growing demand from existing and new customers.

"The improvement in efficiency will help us to maintain production of components at a lower cost, and we will share this benefit with our customers.

"It makes us much more competitive, which is highly significant when we are facing the challenge of competition from emerging economies such as India, China and the former Eastern Bloc countries.

“On the strength of this, we have already won additional work from JCB. We are also broadening our client base into a number of new sectors, with many opportunities across the UK and Europe really coming to fruition now.”