Arefco invests £650,000 in Romi machine tools

Arefco Special Products, a UK-based company specialising in the manufacture of sealing solutions in elastomer, plastic and metallic technologies for industries including oil and gas, has recently invested £650,000 in Romi machine tools as part of a drive to diversify its product offering and increase its current £6m turnover to over £20m by the end of 2020.

As part of this diversification the company has recently installed two Romi C-1600-H CNC lathe with live tools and a C-axis, and a GL-350B sub-spindle CNC lathe with live tools and C-axis at its manufacturing base in Ashington, Northumberland.

Together these two machines along with tooling and measuring equipment add up to an investment of just over £650,000. These are the first machines of their type in Europe, with the GL-350B only making its UK debut at the MACH exhibition in April.

“These Romi machines allow us to solidify our engineering solution provider status by manufacturing the housing or standalone metallic component that complements the sealing system that we are already manufacturing,” UK & European Sales Manager Alison Stewart explained.

“By listening to the voice of our customers, we identified that there is a high demand from the oil and gas industry for large metallic products and a shortage of suppliers capable of servicing these needs; we have 30+ year pedigree servicing this industry to the required standard, safely, with complete traceability and reliability.”

The larger Romi C-1600-H machine is equipped with a Siemens control system, the smaller GL-350B with a Fanuc. Now the company says it can machine metal components up to 1.6m diameter x 5m between centres with a maximum weight of 22 tonnes.

The Romi machines will handle a wide range of metals including mild metals, cast steel, hardened steel, high carbon filled steel, stainless steel, copper, brass and mesh.