£200,000 investment takes niche cabling specialist Nicab’s productivity to next level

Nicab Ltd, among Europe’s leading niche cable and wiring harness manufacturers, has significantly increased productivity at its Silverstone Park headquarters with an investment of £200,000 in state-of-the-art machinery.

The business has acquired a Komax Alpha 530 machine which is capable of crimping and seal insertion of high-quality wire cross-sections of 0.13mm-6mm which.

It can produce these at some nine metres per second (equivalent to reaching from Silverstone to Paris in under 24 hours) from inside its 5,000 sq ft premises.

Nicab Managing Director Nick Locke said:

“The Komax puts us ahead of the competition for our customers and also safeguards jobs as it enables us to compete with similar operators outside Europe.

The set-up time of the Komax gives us an immediate advantage for our customers in terms of efficiency, end quality and cost control.

Nicab high-end cabling products are used by customers across a number of applications that require 100% reliability in demanding environments. These include:

• Life-saving medical equipment
• Aerospace
• Industrial
• Defence
• Automotive
• Audio Visual

Nick added: “Because of the sheer volume and variety of different crimps and cables that we are able to produce as stock, our customers benefit from both the scale that we work to and our ability to supply a high-end product.

“We very much see ourselves as craftspeople – a lot of what we do, particularly some of the more complex stuff, still needs to be done by hand in spite of automation.

“These are skills that can take years to learn and it’s a value we offer our customers.

“The Komax has only added to that value – it is at peak performance all the time which obviously a human cannot maintain.

“It also consistently turns out a perfect piece of work which is invaluable for quality control, detecting and then preventing even the minutest imperfection in a crimp or cut to reach the final batch for delivery – meaning the batch is perfect every time.”

Nicab has enjoyed significant growth in the past 24 months having achieved an annual turn-over of more than £2.6 million for the first time. It now employs 22 full-time staff compared to 18 this time last year.

It also holds a prestigious UL (Underwriters Laboratory) Accreditation – a globally recognised standard in wiring harness assembly.