West Country manufacturer bucks trend with 50% year on year growth claim

In the last half year the company, based in Newton Abbot, near Exeter, has increased staffing levels by one fifth. During the last decade its workforce grew sixfold, with turnover increasing ten times early levels.Managing director Mark Crouchen said: “Within the last 10 years, we have vastly expanded our services.

“The relationships that we have built with our customers over the past decade enables us to provide an excellent service. We work closely with customers and strive to over-deliver on product quality and cost effectiveness, providing continual process improvement for cost and performance optimisation.”

Rockwood designs and manufactures composite components using out-of-autoclave techniques, compression and bladder moulding of pre-preg composite material in metal tooling.

Among the firm’s highlights it has:

• Won a Composites UK Innovation in Manufacture award
• Designed and manufactured cryogenic suspension bands for use in MRI scanners,
• Researched the use of composites in high voltage insulation for the development program for ITER’s nuclear fusion reactor.
• Employed composites in the central core of the UK’s newest fusion device, Tokamak Energy’s ST40

The company achievements include development of a high voltage (HV), high stress, electrical insulation systems for cryogenic applications using high pressure moulding (HPM) of pre-preg composite and polyimide film, to overcome existing products’ limitations.

This has been applied to a new fusion reaction power generation system, where the integrity of the HV insulation is a critical element in the construction to inhibit electrical short circuits within cryogenic high-power generation systems.

Said Crouchen: “The Rockwood technical and development team has gained expert knowledge and experience in the field of composite materials and manufacturing processes over many years of designing, developing and manufacturing”