The daily GRIND

The trend for process companies to outsource parts of their operation is continuing apace. Some, particularly pharmaceuticals manufacturers, choose to send entire parts of their production operations to contract manufacturers, which produce excipients, intermediates and even active ingredients on their behalf. Other firms, meanwhile, choose to trust just one unit operation from their process to an outside agent; either to capitalise on their expertise, or to save money. Sheffield-based British Rema, a specialist in grinding and milling, is one beneficiary of this change.

The story of British Rema could stand in for any company that has survived the changing fortunes of the past hundred years; in fact, its history mirrors that of its home city, Sheffield. British Rema was originally part of the Edgar Allen Group, a heavy engineering firm set up by a Victorian industrialist with business interests across the whole of the British Empire.

The company was set up to serve Sheffield foundries at the end of the nineteenth century. Grinding and powder handling were vital for the steelworks, as the furnaces were fired by pulverised coal; and the company bought the designs for grinding equipment from a German firm called REMA. British Rema produced this grinding equipment, and later, with the help of its research department, developed new designs for mills and classifiers that are still used today.

British Rema continued as a subsidiary of Edgar Allen until the early 1980s, still focusing on the heavy end of the industry and the coal and minerals businesses. But with the engineering sector in decline and the Sheffield steelworks closing dowm, Edgar Allen moved the company away from its headquarters to a new location just outside Sheffield. `Everyone just assumed we'd been sent there to die,' comments engineering development manager Jeff Rogers, who has been with the company since the mid-1960s.

But British Rema's management had other ideas, and staged a management buy-out to secure the company's independence. This, however, left them with another problem. Stuck in the middle of the deepest depression since the 1930s and hopelessly undercapitalised, British Rema needed a new source of income - urgently.

This was the origin of the custom processing division. Rema kept a range of its own grinding equipment to help its customers decide which model would best suit their requirements, explains Rogers - they would bring in a sample of the material that needed to be ground or classified. This equipment needed to be maintained and operational. The company realised that this machinery could be put to work the rest of the time, and earn the company invaluable revenues.

Rogers operates several different types of machinery in the hanger-like environs of the custom processing division. Impact mills handle soft, non-abrasive products, reducing particle sizes of 500 micro m to below 10 micro m. Air micronisers are used for heat sensitive and low boiling-point materials, including metal powders and abrasives; the technique is particularly suitable for reducing difficult to grind materials to `superfine' sizes below 1 micro m. Ball mills handle the hard and abrasive materials to sizes from 200 micro m to below 10 micro m.

The other service offered, classification, is the separation of particles of various sizes from a mixture. This is vital for many applications; removal of `fines' from a bulk powder helps it flow more easily; the intensity of colour of a pigment sample depends greatly on the size of the particles. Moreover, particles of any substance smaller than 8-10micron are a health hazard. British Rema operates two classification techniques in the custom processing division: aerosplit, which produces very sharp separations; and unit air separators, for applications where such precise size distribution is not required.

Grinding is a very old and very basic process, Rogers explains. The equipment for industrial grinding, essentially, hasn't changed for many years, and the advances made by the research departments of British Rema and its competitors during the 1950s and 1960s have not yet been surpassed. This `if it ain't broke, don't fix it' approach has meant that the expertise in grinding often rests with older members of the profession. Younger engineers, says Rogers, often don't have the experience to know which grinding or classifiying method best suits their material. `In a way, we need to educate the younger generation, because engineers of my era are dying out,' he comments.

Moreover, the custom processing approach fits snugly into the batch-type markets which this business serves. Cosmetics, ceramics, rare earth minerals and compounds, fertilisers, fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals; all are switching away from large, continuous plants to smaller, more flexible units. With grinding no longer part of an integrated plant, there is no particular reason that it should be done in the same location as the rest of the process; or, for that matter, by the same company.

In fact, paying to contract out this particular unit operation can enhance a company's earnings, claims Rogers. `The alternative is to buy dedicated grinding equipment. That just isn't always practical for some companies,' he says. `It comes out of the capital investment budget and has to be justified on those grounds. And even when the equipment is bought and paid for, it has to be maintained - and these machines have a lot of moving parts. Contracting out avoids all of these problems. All our customers have to do is drop off their material and we'll return it to them in whatever form they've specified.' PE