Mettis’ most powerful press enters production

One of the most powerful presses in the UK has entered production at our integrated forging facility in Redditch, near Birmingham, enabling us to manufacture even bigger and higher-volume products for the aerospace industry and other key sectors.

The 40-tonne counter-blow hammer press, our largest single investment for almost 40 years, will have the equivalent power of a 20,000-tonne hydraulic press, enabling us to produce precision forgings of up to 250kg, depending on the material. The power and automation capabilities of the DG40 Bêché mean we will also be able to forge some large components faster and more cost-efficiently than many other forging companies in our field.

The total Plattern or bolster footprint of the hammer is 2 metres in length by 1.3 metres in width, allowing us to produce even larger forgings than before. We now have over sixty forging units and our highly-skilled teams are experts at working with a diverse range of materials including aluminium, titanium, steel alloys and more.

The DG40 Bêché formed a multi-million-pound project and its installation was an extensive operation. The press weighs the equivalent of over 200 cars so we had to invest heavily in foundations as well as supporting facilities.

Jeremy Cieslik, Chief Operating Officer, said: “With this new power comes greater capability and capacity to open new platforms to exceed our future customer needs. Applying this, along with our agility, responsiveness and innovation, to new products and processes gives us a total production system game changer.”