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1970
There had been a blacksmith’s shop in the village of Caunton, near Newark, for centuries before the business was taken over, from blacksmith Reg Hardwick, by Tom Broadberry and David Bingham and the company renamed Caunton Engineering Ltd in 1969. The company opened for business on 1st February 1970 and the first year’s sales totalled £25k.

The company won it’s first building order in March 1970 and continued operations from the village until April 1973 when it relocated to a new purpose built fabrication plant at Kirkby in Ashfield, Nottingham.
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1973
The move coincided with the company’s first major industrial building, a new printing works for the Nottingham Evening Post. The company started its extensive training initiative with both shop floor and technical apprenticeships. The company was elected members of the British Constructional Steelwork Association encouraged by East Midlands based fabricators who recognised a rapidly expanding competitor.

In 1978 Caunton purchased the first CSC steel frame computer design package along with the first Olivetti computer imported to the UK. This marked the start of our long tradition and love affair with computing power. Every subsequent investment has always been based on the benefits IT can bring the business and so our customers. Even at this early stage we were carrying out all operations, design, detail, fabrication and erection ‘In House’ and we have continued so to do ever since.
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1982
Rapid expansion took place over the coming years until the company was operating on four different sites on the same estate. During the three day week and the miner’s strike the company purchased a large generator and continued working full shifts right through. Clearly a major re-think was required and the directors made several trips abroad to find the most economical steel fabrication methods. Fabrication plants were visited in Germany, Australia, and the USA to study methods of operation. Clearly we needed to fully automate the plant and move to computer generated drawings.

The first move was to install a German drafting suite and then search for a suitable new home where we could install CAD / CAM manufacture. This marked the introduction of 3-D Geometric Modelling by a steelwork contractor in the UK. The year: 1985/6. The search for a new location took four years until we finally purchased the National Workshops of British Coal at the end of 1989.
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1990
The company moved to Moorgreen in January 1990 and completed an investment program of £3.6 million. The German company Peddinghaus designed the layout for the CAD / CAM facility which was driven by the BOCAD drafting system. The operation took two years to become fully operational and ‘switch on’ was Easter 1992. Just in time for the deepest recession the industry has ever suffered. Fortunately our investment made us super efficient and recession or not our sales rocketed and our overheads fell. Productivity increased well beyond expectations and with increased standardisation driven by a fully integrated CAD/CAM design/detail/manufacturing facility we gained market share and increased profitability.

The company was now a National fabricator working from Aberdeen, Oil Rig work, to Lands End, where we built the last Tin Mine in the UK. In 1992 all our production moved to a Just in Time basis supported by the then British Steel (now Corus). At the same time one of the original founders, Tom Broadberry retired and the Bingham family purchased all the shares in the business. Also in 1992 Simon Bingham joined the company, later becoming Group M.D., in 1996 and MD of Caunton Engineering in 2000.
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1998
The change in Caunton’s impact on the industry is clear to see. Growth since 1992 has been a consistent upward path. The company was by now undertaking large nationally noted projects like the new Land Rover plant at Solihull and the Thames Court award winning building in the City of London, both well in excess of 2000 tonnes of steel. Shopping centres were completed in Liverpool, Barrow and Mansfield. Tiger Buildings was also launched to undertake smaller contracts to service the many partnerships we had formed with clients and contractors. Tiger’s annual sales now exceed £5m. Back to top

2001 (A shift in computing)
2001 saw us take up another first for the industry with the launch of our intranet / extranet knowledge portal. Once again we are at the cutting edge of harnessing the very latest in technology in order to give our customers a better service. We have created a system that enables our staff, partners, customers and suppliers to access every piece of information held within the company.

Access can be through a myriad of devices such as WAP enabled mobile phones, PDA’s or laptops. Location is no longer a constraint with the latest devices and as access can be reached via our website internet cafes can also be used to stay in touch.
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2004
The early years of the new century have seen continuous improvement and development throughout the business. Caunton have completed a successful merger with a sister company, Tiger Buildings Limited, and consolidated the main operations into a fully revamped office space.

The company’s on-site capabilities have grown to the point where we are capable of erecting over 70% of all we sell. In the interests of safety and efficiency, we have established an in-house safety-netting operation. Again working towards these twin objectives, the company has played a major role in the development of two major site-oriented innovations – Quicon, the slotted beam-connector, and the Dawson Quick Release beam-lifting safety shackle. For more details of the former the reader can click here and for the latter there are details in the News Section of this website. Indeed such is the importance of Health and Safety in the company’s development plans that all staff who work on or visit site now comply with the MCG requirement for CSCS cards, and this well in advance of the prescribed cut off date.

Within the manufacturing unit, the installation of a CNC tube profiling machine extends our ability to satisfy clients’ ever increasing demands and ambitions. Team development within the plant and the introduction of multi-skilling has enhanced the capability of Caunton’s speedline style production - with year-on-year productivity gains.

The company’s reputation within the automotive industry has been maintained with the recent addition to our client base of Japanese car giant, Honda, based in Swindon. Caunton has benefited from steelwork’s increased success in the residential market. Our internal technical capabilities have enabled us to capture a significant share of this market, while retaining our grip on the retail market and the distribution sector with numerous projects for well-known high street names such as Sainsbury, Asda, IKEA and NEXT. Indeed this technical capability enables the company to meet the rigorous demands needed for the tendering and scheme development of PFI and PPP projects.

The development of the use of I.T. across all areas of the business continues to reap rewards, as ever more efficient ways of processing the workload are found. The detailed use of process mapping provides Caunton with a much leaner operation – an absolute must for a UK-based manufacturing business.
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2005 - 2008
During this period the Group purchased a further 32 acres of land. In addition Caunton have invested £5m in a new facility and replacement machinery. The new facility, known as Plane Building was opened by the Rt Hon Geoff Hoon (see News related article) and is a 37,000 sq.ft development dedicated almost exclusively to paint application. Utilising the very latest in technologies and equipment paint treatments can be painted and loaded within 90 minutes all year round. In addition to this Caunton designed the building to ensure it incorporated many sustainable features thereby keeping the company’s carbon footprint as low as possible. The development includes a state of the art surface water treatment system, along with energy saving features like solar thermal panels to heat water and roof lights to maximise natural daylight. The latest ‘grey water’ equipment has also been installed.

There is no doubt that our general awareness of the environment and especially carbon emissions has increased over the last few years and Caunton have remained at the forefront of this. Indeed the business had been doing a great deal of ground work from 2004 to 2007 which culminated in Caunton being awarded the BCSA Silver Award for Sustainability as well as gaining ISO 14001:2004, the internationally accepted specification for an environmental management system (EMS). Also in 2007 Caunton finalised their Carbon Footprint in readiness for carbon credit trading which certain developments require.

In addition to continual development of our business processes and re-investment in the hardware and infrastructure of our business we have designed developed and opened our own Academy in order to meet the demands of our business in terms of trained personnel. Our Academy is focused on school leavers and training of key engineering skills alongside a day release college programme. Such has been the success of the scheme that for two consecutive years Caunton has reached the final of the regional apprenticeship of year scheme and more recently was featured on BBC1’s Politics Show.

The Academy is among many training and development schemes that Caunton undertakes which have resulted in the company being recognised by external bodies for its development and management of its employees. In 2006 Caunton were invited as a finalist in Contract Journal’s Best Place to Work in Construction competition and in 2007 Caunton was runner up in the KPMG assessed Nottingham Evening Post Company of the Year Award.

As well as our staff remaining of the utmost importance to us so too do our clients and over the past four years we have continued to develop strategic relationships with key customers which have been formally recognised in certain instances such as Taylor Woodrow’s SAP initiative. In other instances our long term relationships with customers have also been rewarded –for example Simons Construction have awarded Caunton not only with Supplier of Year award but also a special award of recognition for a 10 year partnership.
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2008 and beyond
In result of the £5m re-investment into a new facility and replacement machinery Caunton began to reap the rewards through not only securing many more prominent contracts but also being judged as the coveted Nottinghamshire Company of the Year 2008. The award was sponsored by Nottinghamshire County Council and KPMG and cited the recognition that turnover is at record level, training and employee benefits are of an exemplary high standard and that investment in engineering and manufacturing resources is progressive and substantial.

Further to this, on the same night, Caunton were awarded an eminent Structural Steel Design Award Certificate of Merit for Constructionarium Mini-Gherkin, Norfolk. The annual Structural Steel Design Awards sponsored by steelmaker Corus and steelwork industry trade association BCSA always elicit many marvellous feats of engineering in steelwork. The award to Caunton, Certificate of Merit, was however linked to in the judge’s dedication to what they referred to as “an outstanding training initiative” which makes it the first to our knowledge to be so delineated.

When looking ahead, we at Caunton feel that the company is well placed to meet our customer’s expectations in an ever-changing Industry.

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