Lives depend on nuts and bolts
Nuts and bolts company BST Supplies has every reason to ensure its products are shipshape.
Staff at the Wolverhampton firm are producing the fixings that will keep a world-leading nuclear submarine together.
BST also has the contract to provide the bolts that hold together vital wellheads on the North Sea oil rigs, together with Royal Navy frigates
The new Astute class submarines are being built in Barrow by BAe Systems.
Stripped down, the shell of the craft is incredibly intricate and shows how the submarine relies on the heavy duty parts supplied by the Bushbury company.
Its specialised hi-tech fasteners, accurate down to one thousandth of an inch, are approved for use in every component of the new attack subs.
"I couldn't even guess how many of our fasteners are in each sub," said BST joint managing director Tony Lawless.
"It is in the thousands. Each one has to be totally reliable – failure is not acceptable, because lives, literally, depend on them."
Having gained MoD approval for its fasteners for use on the BAe project, BST also supplies other firms making components for the Astute subs, such as Rolls-Royce at Derby.
But the company's biggest success in recent weeks has been a £2.5 million contract to supply vital fasteners and bolts for wellhead systems in the petrochemical industry.
The deal, with FMC Technologies in Dunfermline, Scotland, will run for two years and is a major boost for BST's turnover, which reached £4.5 million last year.
"The fasteners fit on the 'Christmas trees' on the top of the well heads of the rigs you see in the North Sea – the collection of valves, spools, pressure gauges and connections that control production," said Mr Lawless.
The contract is likely to create 10 jobs across a wide range of skills and BST aims to recruit manufacturing, quality and technical staff.
Mr Lawless and Stuart Mee, his fellow managing director at BST Supplies, founded the business nearly 20 years ago in a starter unit in Tysley, Birmingham.
Within 12 months they had outgrown their starter unit and moved to premises in Wolverhampton.
Using the Black Country's engineering services, steel supplies, sub-contract machining and metal-finishing companies and test labs – such as Focus NDT next door on Fordhouses Road – the company had grown in strength and reputation.
Two years ago it moved to its current 48,000 sq ft factory on the Zenith site in Fordhouses and now employs 50 people, including Mr Mee's son James, who arrived as a school leaver 12 years ago and is now the firm's general manager.
Each bolt is manufactured on the site, made from a range of specialist alloys and steels, using both traditional lathes and the latest in computer-controlled equipment.
