More success for Titan Wheels
Hidden away in a quiet corner of the countryside is a firm maintaining the proud traditions of West Midlands heavy engineering and metal-bashing.
On a site at the small village of Cookley, near Kidderminster, that has been the scene of foundries and metalworking for nearly 400 years, Titan Steel Wheels has become the leading business in its field worldwide.
In the past year alone it has recruited more staff and boosted production by 50 per cent, as well as investing in new equipment worth several hundred thousand pounds.
The firm makes the three and five-part wheels used on huge mining and construction vehicles and for the high-performance mobile cranes that are allowed to reach speeds of up to 85 kph on Continental European roads.
The Cookley site is also the headquarters of the global Titan Europe business, which has operations in Italy, Australia, India and the US.
But the traditional heart of the business is the Cookley factory, which first made steel wheels around the turn of the last century.
Over the next hundred years the firm passed through a string of owners before it emerged as Titan in 1995.
Since then it has gone from strength to strength, picking up its second Queens Award for Enterprise this year for exports that now account for 85 per cent of its sales – mostly to Europe but also to Brazil, Australia, the US and Japan.
