London-based Stone Foundries (www.stonefoundries.com) — a leading manufacturer of lost-wax castings, sand castings and finished products — has secured a multi-million-pound contract as a result of product verification support from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) (www.npl.co.uk) on the Sharing in Growth (SiG) programme (www.sig-uk.org).

This paves the way for further investment in equipment and technology at the company’s facility, which produces high-integrity aluminium and magnesium castings for the aerospace and defence industries.

NPL’s product verification team has been working closely with Stone Foundries and saw an opportunity to use NPL’s expertise in laser scanning measurement and casting modelling and simulation.

Access to this expert knowledge greatly increased Stone Foundries’ confidence in the use of casting modelling process data.

Simon Butler, Stone Foundries’ quality director, said: “As a result, the company was able to demonstrate its capability to a potential new customer — and secured a substantial new contract.

"Through NPL’s support, the customer recognised that we now have the capability to manufacture this complex part in a difficult magnesium alloy.”

Managing director John Townsend said: “This will help us fulfil the growth ambitions set out when we joined the SiG programme in 2013. At that time, we were seeing light alloy castings work transferring from the UK and the USA to Eastern Europe and Asia.

“With the support of the SiG programme, our capability and competitiveness have reached new levels, resulting in major long-term global opportunities and investment in class-leading new technologies.”