___________________________________________________________________________________ Abbey
Forged Products
Operating across oil and gas, defense, aerospace and nuclear, Abbey Forged Products( Abbey) stands as one of the UK’ s most modern forging facilities. Through continuous investment in its capabilities, the company now manufactures highquality forgings for some of the most demanding and critical environments, from deep-water subsea components to nuclear and aerospace applications. Jackie Neal, Managing Director, retraces the company’ s early days and evolution to its current form.
“ When I started the business in 1982, I was working from home, coordinating manufacturing around the capability that existed in Sheffield at the time, which encompassed different small businesses that could handle treatment, forging, testing and everything in between. I would arrange products to move around those businesses and deliver them, and the operation grew from there. Eventually I reached the stage where I was accumulating enough stock that I needed proper premises and an office. Those early operations were predominantly stockholding, buying and selling material, whereas today we tend to focus far more on processing. All our forgings, including rings, boss forgings, blocks, bar, and any other shape required, are hand-forged to order and entirely bespoke. Going back to those early days, we rented premises on the site of a forge, which I used daily before sending material out for further processing elsewhere. We then moved to the site we are on now in 2007, which spans six acres,” she begins.
The company spent the following 20 years converting that site into something tailored to its needs, continually improving it along the way. Today, Abbey has brought nearly all previously outsourced processes in-house,
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