PP C&A’s Tony Hague left with Mark Lindsay of Product Approvals

West Midlands-based PP Control & Automation (PP C&A), a leading provider of strategic manufacturing outsourcing services, has signed a deal with Telford-based Product Approvals to boost its product certification offering to global clients.

PP C&A has seen a major increase in demand from machinery builders sending products to North America and is looking to capitalise on new opportunities by strengthening a seven-year relationship with the certification specialist.

The new formal agreement gives PP C&A the backing of seven product approval experts and rapid access to dedicated laboratory and testing equipment covering electromagnetic capabilities, safety and environmental compliance.

While the partnership has been heavily directed towards supporting PP C&A’s clients with UL 508a certification and NFPA79 compliance covering industrial control panels and electrical cable harnesses, it also encompasses future projects around country and industry-specific approvals and legislation.

Ever-changing global legislative demands
Tony Hague, CEO of PP Control & Automation, said: “This partnership is all about increasing our engineering bandwidth and access to technical expertise that will support the requirements of our growing order book.

“We currently work with 20 of the world’s largest machinery builders and these span aerospace, food and drink, machine tools, medical, packaging and renewables. The machines are becoming increasingly customised and will need to comply to ever-changing global legislative demands.”

He continued: “Product Approvals’ very specialist knowledge complements our own internal ‘design for manufacture’ experience and, together, this will give us the ability to offer our clients a much more in-depth engineering due diligence service. It is an important weapon to have in our arsenal and will help de-risk new product/process introductions.”

Established in 2006, Product Approvals supports its customers to get products on sale in target markets as soon as possible by helping them meet required legislation. Despite the Covid-19 slowdown, the business has continued to grow over the past 12 months and has invested in strengthening its team of experts and its laboratory and testing capabilities.

Mark Lindsay, director of Product Approvals, said: “This feels like the prefect next step in our relationship with PP C&A and builds on seven years of working together and some outstanding educational seminars we jointly put on about UL508a.”

“We now have dedicated engineers assigned to the strategic outsourcing manufacturing expert, so that we can deliver the fastest possible support on engineering issues, testing and full certification services.

“It is much more than just that though. We will be working with the production team in Cheslyn Hay to scope our future projects and where we can add value to the PP C&A offer. This could be reducing lead times, eliminating risk and even opening up new global markets by advising on the right certification.”