Chesterfield-based Amies Plastics (www.amiesplastics.co.uk) — believed to be the UK’s oldest plastics manufacturing firm — is celebrating its 90th birthday this year with the purchase of two new Arburg machines to keep itself at the forefront of the industry.

Founded in Sheffield in 1929 as a compression moulding company (using phenolic resins including Bakelite), Amies Plastics has carried the name of its founder (Bill Amies) ever since.

From ‘day one’, the company made items such as cooking-pot handles and knobs, telephone and electrical components, ashtrays and dominos. By the late 1930s, the company was producing a range of parts for the Allied Forces in the Second World War.

Today, it makes injection-moulded parts for the automotive, plumbing, general engineering and medical sectors — and it remains a family-owned company.

Managing director Bob Ball said: “There are companies today manufacturing plastic components that were incorporated pre-1929, but they have evolved from metal bashers and printers, whereas Amies has only ever made plastic parts.

"The business plans to stay in the niche ‘added value/engineering field’, but with an emphasis on continuing to develop and expand our medical offer. Our relationship with Arburg is amazingly strong — all of our machines are Arburgs.”

Most of the company’s 20 moulding machines are in the 40-60 tonnes range. The two new machines are replacing two older models of the same size.

Specialising in small highly accurate parts for medical applications, it is company policy to calibrate its moulding machines regularly — a service that Arburg Ltd (www.arburg.com) provides.

“Having Arburg calibrate all our machines on a two-yearly cycle gives us — and ultimately our customers — the confidence that we are not compromising our components, with out-of-specification machine parameters affecting our components.”