A leading name in the commercial washrooms industry, this customer commissioned us to supply them with a one-off, anodised, extruded aluminium profile in six different lengths. We presented them with a few options to the customer, and they chose one that fit well with their project, while also resulting in significant cost savings.

The customer returned with another enquiry: this time, for a machined and powder coated aluminium hinge. While we were able to manufacture the hinge in line with the specifications given, our technical team realised that there was a far simpler - and cheaper - solution. We worked with one of our global supply partners to cast the part, saving our customer both money and time - not just now, but in the long run.

While our extrusion and fabrication capabilities are often what attract new customers to Edmo, we like to think our creative technical solutions help us keep them.

This collaboration started simply: the customer needed a bespoke, extruded aluminium profile, anodised and supplied in varying lengths. We presented a few options and, while the customer didn’t choose the cheapest, the solution was a perfect fit and still represented significant cost savings.

Following the success of this job, the customer came back to us with another enquiry: they needed a machined and powder coated hinge. The hinge was being made by machining a flat aluminium bar to create the two sides of the hinge. These were then powder coated and joined with a steel pin.

Our technical team reviewed this process, and found it to be unnecessarily costly and over engineered. We convinced the customer to have the component parts custom cast by one of our expert suppliers. Once the component parts were cast, they would only need minor machining, powder coating and assembly. The whole process was quicker, cheaper, and far less labour intensive, but presented the same great results as before.

Even taking into account the bespoke tooling costs involved in the first run of this project, the new fabrication solution resulted in immediate savings for the customer. Casting is a highly cost-effective process and, being both quick and very repeatable, was perfect for this job.

After only a few production runs, the bespoke die cast tooling paid for itself, leaving our customer to enjoy a simpler solution at a far lower price than before.

But while these processes, and the order in which they were carried out, resulted in a perfect component part, the size and shape of the completed product meant that shipping it back and forth was costing a fortune.

We needed to make the bending process the last process, which meant finding a powder coating that would withstand machining with no flaking, crazing or discolouring.

We developed a bespoke aluminium powder coating that could undergo the bending process with no ill effects. The pre-coated items can be shipped just once, saving our client a significant sum on shipping.

We fabricate and powder coat profiles for this customer, while they bend the profiles on specialist rigs at their premises.

Powder coating is a finishing process, and it usually happens last for obvious reasons: to prevent the coating being damaged by other work. In this case, that meant shipping the components back and forth between us and our customer three times:

• We sent the extruded, fabricated profiles to our customer for bending
• They sent the bent components back to us for powder coating
• We sent the bent, powder coated products back to the customer

Two of these three shipments involved bent components, which meant transporting awkwardly shaped products in huge - largely empty - containers. The result? Exorbitant shipping costs.

Our objective was to find a way to make bending the last process to eliminate these costly logistical issues. We set about working with various powder manufacturers to develop a bespoke powder coating with more elasticity, allowing us to bend the component after powder coating.

After significant trial and error, we developed a coating that wouldn’t flake, craze, or discolour during bending. And to ensure long-lasting, quality results, we sent a coated and bent profile away for rigorous additional testing, which it withstood perfectly.

Extensive trials led us to develop a powder coating mixture with added nylon, resulting in a more elastic mixture that can be bent without damage to integrity or appearance.

We now extrude, fabricate and powder coat profiles, before shipping them to our customer for bending. Only one round of transport is needed, and the shipped profiles are not yet bent, which means far more efficient packing, with less wasted space.

Our customer’s logistics issues are now resolved, and they continue to work with us today.

Since then, when we acted as a simple bar length supplier, we’ve expanded our partnership with this customer and now fulfil all their extrusion design, fabrication, finishing, assembly and logistics requirements.

As we project manage the entire process, the customer only has to deal with one point of contact. We’re able to provide an integrated service, with full control of project deadlines. And, because we work with a global network of suppliers, we’re able to offer consistently competitive prices and lead times, and reduce our customer’s inventory with no risk to product supply.

Initially, the customer took us on as a supplier of extruded aluminium bar length. But, as they continued to work with us - and their numerous other suppliers - they began to realise that our integrated range of extrusion fabrication and finishing services could be a more effective solution for their business.

Over the course of several years of collaboration, we’ve gradually taken ownership of all aspects of this customer’s projects, working with them on the design and prototyping of products to enhance their quality and functionality, taking over project and component management, providing them with a full assembly service, and holding and delivering their stock, which has reduced their inventory while maintaining a healthy flow to market.

Our stringent quality control service, and our ability to ship products anywhere in the world - complete with relevant informational inserts and branded packaging - has taken a huge task off the customer’s shoulders.

We’ve been providing this customer with a fully managed service for some time, now, and it’s been a hugely successful collaboration.

Every aspect of their extrusion work is handled here at Edmo, resulting in an integrated approach to design, manufacture, stocking and supply that saves time, energy and money. And because we’re involved at every step, we’ve got to know what our customer needs, enabling us to foresee potential challenges, and even prevent them from occurring.

We were tasked with helping to design and create an attractive framework to surround our customer’s state-of-the-art technology. They’d already had one surround profile created, but it was angular, unappealing, and hardly the best advert for their slick conferencing set-ups.

The initial design suggested by our customer wasn’t extrudable, so we worked with them to design and prototype a profile that would work. Once the extensive testing stages were out of the way, we delivered a turnkey extrusion solution to the customer, supplying and machining the extruded profiles, and providing a bespoke powder coating finish.

When this customer got in touch with us via our website, it was with a simple enough request: to create a prototype for an attractive, extruded aluminium surround for their remote conferencing technology.

But, once we’d spoken with the customer in more detail, it was clear there was a lot more we could do to make their project a success.

During the prototyping stages, it became obvious that the design the customer was looking for wasn’t going to be easily extrudable. Given that the customer’s ultimate goal was to secure 2% of the global market for their industry, our challenge was to help them design a profile that was relatively cheap to manufacture but visually appealing enough to communicate the brand’s value.

Our design support team worked with the customer to achieve a design that was extrudable, offering additional assistance with the required corner mouldings and aluminium bending. The result was a perfected prototype that could be put into production.

During a tour of our facilities, the customer was impressed by our dedicated aluminium powder coating centre, where we’re able to offer 200 stock finishes, as well as a range of bespoke colours - ideal for matching to our customers’ exact specifications.

We’re continuing to work with this customer. The design is complete and finalised, and the product has been put to market. Sales are starting to increase, and the customer’s on their way to securing a large market share, which will mean tens of thousands of units needed.

Our initial design support has enabled the customer to make significant savings on expensive aluminium tooling costs, and has created a product that is both functional and aesthetically on point.

The project had already hit considerable problems with a previous supplier, resulting in a product that was unfit for purpose. So when the customer came to us looking for extruded profiles that had been machined and powder coated, we were able to offer much more. Our design team worked to create a functioning product, working through tolerancing issues and developing a range of bespoke, cost-saving casts and fixings.

We powder coated the components, and brought the whole collection of parts together in a customer-ready assembly kit.

The customer in this project came to Edmo with a host of good ideas and bad experiences. Their plan was to bring a new level of cost-effectiveness to the hotel fit-out process by creating a modular pod for their rooms, reducing the time needed for a fit-out from a number of days to a matter of hours. The pods would house the bed, electrical services, and the shower room facilities, transforming an empty space into a neat, comfortable, ready-to-rent hotel room.

The customer had previously worked with another extrusion supplier, with very poor results. The ‘completed’ product didn’t fit together: dimensions and tolerances for mating parts didn’t add up, and the machining requirements were incorrect. Despite the considerable investment, the customer decided to write off this disastrous first attempt and start again.

We were initially tasked with providing extrusion, machining and powder coating services. But, on hearing of the problems the customer had encountered, our design team worked to create a functioning product, working through the tolerancing issues and developing a range of bespoke casts and fixings, resulting in a saving of over £100k for the customer.

We applied a specialist anti-graffiti and anti-bacterial powder coating to the pod, and brought the whole collection of parts together in a customer-ready assembly kit.

This is a project that’s full of potential. Because the pod we created for the customer is modular, there’s room for adaptation in future. The customer in this project has just been bought out by a much larger chain, which means that the extruded framework is ready to roll out across thousands of hotels.

Our competitive prices and turnkey solutions have stood us in good stead with this customer, and we look forward to working with them again in future.