Ten years after being founded, Nasmyth Group is out to make a name for itself at the Farnborough air show.
The privately-owned, Coventry-based precision engineering firm has expanded fast. A series of acquisitions, joint ventures and start-ups – as well as solid organic growth – has taken it from 250 employees and a turnover of $18 million a decade ago, to 750 staff and $120 million sales today – two-thirds of it in aerospace.
Its dozen or so UK-based subsidiaries – specialising in the likes of engine components, manufacturing test rigs and surface treatments – are based around Nottingham, Coventry, London and the south coast. Most of the businesses it has bought continue to trade under their former identities, linked by a common logo design. However, for the first time the group will exhibit under the corporate brand at Farnborough.
“We’re at the stage where customers are beginning to talk about Nasmyth as a group, so we have decided to promote our name more now,” says chairman and chief executive Peter Smith, a physicist and entrepreneur. He founded Nasmyth when he acquired Bulwell Precision Engineers of Pinxton, Nottinghamshire – a supplier of parts and sub-assemblies to Rolls-Royce and others companies.
Nasmyth’s latest acquisition, Arden Precision in Solihull near Birmingham, completed in February and is its first in six years. The purchase is typical of the companies Smith likes: family-owned with specialist capabilities and a good reputation that can integrate into the group. “It’s like a jigsaw puzzle where you are choosing the right pieces to fit together to provide a total solution to the customer,” he says.
That jigsaw allows Nasmyth to offer “total solutions” to customers – from design and innovation through machining and surface treatments, up to subsystem integration and aftermarket support. Many former principals have continued to run acquisitions day-to-day as the businesses become integrated into Nasmyth. “We’ve found the transitions have worked very well,” Smith says.
Nasmyth employs 750 Staff
Nasmyth
Nasmyth has started to spread its footprint from the UK. It started a US machining business in South Carolina in 2007 – its first overseas manufacturing facility. “As we were establishing a global customer base, we felt it was appropriate to be the guy in the house next door,” says Smith. Three years ago, the group also opened an office in Bengaluru to manage low-cost Indian suppliers – a model he says works better than owning or forming joint ventures with local companies.
Nasmyth’s main focus now is North America, with acquisitions firmly on the agenda. “We are not averse to buying in the UK, but we are looking primarily to the USA,” he says. “We are a UK company looking to be a global company.”
In five years, Nasmyth wants a stateside presence to match its British business. “It’s a challenging target, but we have a management team very familiar with the US market, and we think it’s achievable,” he adds.
Smith is still a fan of what the UK can offer, however. Most of Nasmyth’s aerospace revenues come from directly supplying original equipment manufacturers in the UK, including Airbus, Bombardier and Rolls-Royce, and Smyth believes the UK retains a solid aerospace manufacturing base, despite global competition. OEMs value local relationships, he says. “What differentiates the UK is its skills base, and OEMs recognise that on-time delivery and quality really matter,” he adds.
Skills shortages in the UK remain a concern, however, and Smith admits that attracting young people to a career in engineering is not always easy. But, he says, the UK has universities and technical colleges “familiar with producing people with the skills levels that we require”, and the company devotes much of its resources to training, including apprentice and graduate programmes. “At any time, over 10% of our workforce is in full-time training,” he says.
With small factories hidden away on industrial parks dotted around the country – most with a workforce in double figures – Nasmyth could never be described as being at the glamorous end of the aerospace industry. But with turnover growing annually in double figures – in recent years largely organically – and big ambitions overseas, Nasmyth is heading into its second decade as a name to be reckoned with in the UK supply chain.
Source: Flight International
