“Approximately” isn’t a word you’re likely to hear much at EK Machine Tools’ premises. Measurements are taken very seriously indeed with bearings and other parts accurately manufactured to within a thousandth of an inch.

Such standards of exactitude are needed to cater for the company's main markets which include the offshore oil and gas, compressor, electronic, automotive and aero-engineering industrial sectors. Parts machined at this sub-contract, precision engineering firm’s factory in Kelvin Industrial Estate, East Kilbride, could, for example, turn up as an essential component in a power plant turbine.

The company was established in 1962 by Ronnie Campbell. His sons Frank and Ronnie Jr. joined the business during the ’80s and now take care of its day-to-day running. Flexibility is one reason they’ve survived while others in the manufacturing industry have stumbled and fallen.

“You have to keep looking for new markets because you are losing markets all the time,” explains Frank. “For example, when we started out we were serving the ship building industry. It shows you can't take what you have for granted.”

The company has diversified to sell machinery, spare parts, oils and abrasives and recently set up a website - www.ekomat.co.uk - to promote this. It has also benefited from a sustained strategy of investing in machinery. As a client of Small Business Gateway East Kilbride, the company has received valuable advice and assistance on accessing funding from SLED’S business loans and Business Venture Fund as well as the Scottish Executive. “Our aim is to keep investing and growing,” says Frank. “The loans have been a big help in allowing us to do that.”

The machines themselves are impressive specimens - some of them automatically switching between 32 different tools parts at dizzying speeds. There are Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) machines for turning, milling and assembling, but it’s flat lapping and grinding that the company specialises in. Lapping, in particular, is how those staggeringly precise finishes are achieved. “Depending on what’s required, different grades of a silicon carbide slurry are passed through the machine wearing away the material,” explains Frank. “It gives an exceptionally flat finish, so smooth that we measure its accuracy with light bands.” Precision engineering indeed.

Business South Lanarkshire - Winter 2001

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