The Company
Lestercast Ltd is a fully modernised Investment Casting Centre founded over 40 years ago in Leicester.
The company uses advanced manufacturing methods and rapid prototyping technologies enabling them to produce bespoke, high quality, precision engineered components in various metals and alloys with short lead times. The versatility of the investment casting process or lost wax method provides an effective and economical alternative to other methods of producing metal components.
What they Do
Lestercast produces components for both industrial and commercial applications and supplies bespoke parts to a wide range of markets including automotive, rail, motorsport and marine. They also offer toolmaking, machining, heat treatment, surface finishing and testing services, amongst others.
Lestercast are continually planning ways to drive the business forwards through innovation, in order to achieve a world class reputation for quality and excellence. The company recently won the Leicester Mercury Business Awards 2015 “Company of the Year” award, which is evidence of their achievements to date.
The Challenge
For Lestercast, a business strategy to constantly strive to make their processes more efficient and expand the capacity of the business meant that they identified the need to invest in new equipment, including a parts washing machine, wet extractor, a linishing machine and a melting furnace. The overall cost of these meant that the company would have to phase the investment in over a period of time.
The Solution
Lestercast successfully applied for an ERDF Luminate Transport iNet SME Grant, which enabled them to purchase most of the required equipment in a much shorter timescale. This will help the company to move forward with their business growth strategy.
The Outcome
Having now purchased all but the melting furnace, Lestercast have been able to forge ahead towards achieving their goal. The outcome will be enhanced capability and capacity and ultimately the company can attract further contracts which can be delivered more efficiently with shorter lead times.
Quote
“We are very grateful to Transport iNet for awarding us the grants that have allowed Lestercast to really move forward quickly in 2014 and the grant was pivotal in Lestercast achieving 29.5% increase in sales during the year. Thanks Transport iNet”.
Chris Batty, Managing Director
“We are very grateful to Transport iNet for awarding us the grants that have allowed Lestercast to really move forward quickly in 2014 and the grant was pivotal in Lestercast achieving 29.5% increase in sales during the year. Thanks Transport iNet”
Chris Batty, Managing Director
