Northern Ireland aerospace interior companies to showcase innovation at Hamburg

Above: (left to right) Patricia Clements, MD of Bradfor Ltd, Kelly Murphy, Invest NI, Stephen Cromie, MD of Exact CNC and Joanne Liddle, MD IPC Mouldings.

The successful businesses, all exporters, include seat cover manufacturers, Bradfor Ltd, rapid response CNC machining and composite finishing company, Exact CNC and plastic injection moulding company, IPC Mouldings.  In addition to showcasing their products and services at Hamburg the companies will be demonstrating how they offer additional value add to their Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) customers through innovation and excellence.

Joanne Liddle, managing director, IPC Mouldings explains: “IPC Mouldings is an advanced manufacturing company offering mould tool design and manufacture, CNC machining and plastic injection moulding from concept to completion, specialising in the aircraft interiors industry. 

“Passionate about quality, with a core value of understanding our customer, we meet their current and future needs to ensure their product is brought to market within their timescales.  IPC manages both design and operational expectations supporting our customers through planning, testing, production and aftermarket. 

“The aircraft interior expo at Hamburg allows us to showcase our expertise, build relationships, discover new innovation and technologies, be inspired by leading experts and create opportunities to keep us positioned at the top for winning new business.”

Staged annually in Hamburg, the Aircraft Interiors Expo is a vibrant must attend business-to-business event presenting a diverse range of leading suppliers to Europe and International aircraft interiors professionals and airlines with the latest innovations, technologies and products.

Stephen Cromie, managing director of Exact CNC, explains: “Specialising in Rapid Response, we recently received an urgent order over a weekend for 16 parts which we programmed, cut the raw material, machined parts, carried out FAI, dispatched the parts from Northern Ireland and had them in North America within 30 hours.

“The following day we carried out the same process and sent another set of parts to Toulouse, France within 22 hours, living up to our strapline; ‘Around the clock around the world’. This is not a typical weekend, however faced with the seemingly impossible, and a good customer in difficulty, Exact made it happen.

“Hamburg will present us with an opportunity to showcase our precision engineering and composite finishing techniques and show that quality, customer satisfaction and on-time delivery, which are key in all that we do.”

Northern Ireland is a global leader in aircraft interiors with around one third of the world’s aircraft seats manufactured in the region. The three companies will position their individual products on an ‘exploded’ seat display.

Patricia Clements, managing director, Bradfor Ltd also commented: “Northern Ireland has a rich history in the aerospace industry with a cluster of successful companies especially in the design and manufacture of parts for commercial aircraft seating.

“Bradfor Ltd has been operating from Rostrevor since 1996 providing seat covers, headrest covers, straps and diaphrams along with digitising services to a range of global clients. With our recent investment and addition of lamination and embossing services we are very excited to showcase our many products at Hamburg.”

All three companies are AS9100 accredited providers with Bradfor Ltd and IPC achieving SC21 Award Silver. Exact CNC has recently committed to achieving this standard.   SC21 is an ADS supply chain excellence programme designed to accelerate the competitiveness of the aerospace and defence industry by raising the performance of its supply chain. 

Bradfor Ltd also received EFQM 5 Star ‘Recognised for Excellence’ with IPC receiving EFQM 4 Star.

The Expo takes place from the 10th to the 12th April, and Bradfor, Exact CNC and IPC are exhibiting on the Northern Ireland Aerospace/Invest NI stand as part of the wider UK offering.