Growing with the company

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Nov 10, 2005

You could say that Paul Briggs, Managing Director of GR Booth, who is currently celebrating 40 years with the company, is a man with tooling in his veins.

You could say that Paul Briggs, Managing Director of GR Booth, who is currently celebrating 40 years with the company, is a man with tooling in his veins.

It would also be true to say that he loves his work so much that he bought the company.

Briggs joined company as an apprentice in 1965, just five days after his 15th birthday.

After completing his apprenticeship he gradually became more involved with the development of tooling from design to manufacture, becoming Foreman in 1974, Production Manager in 1983 and Technical Director in 1991.

Subsequently, on the retirement of the previous owner Robert Booth in 1999, Briggs bought the company jointly with John Furness, proprietor of tooling reclamation specialists J and P Tooling, with which GR Booth was already working on a reciprocal basis.

However, becoming owner of the company does not mean that Paul now sits in isolated glory in a pristine office.

Far from it - he is still very much a 'hands on' manager, spending much of his time on the shop floor.

"I have always been interested and involved in the development and production side of the business and I can't imagine not being a part of it", he said.

"And these days I'm just as keen to develop our sales and export markets".

"The USA now accounts for 15-20% of turnover, Italy is becoming a major market and we also supply to France, Belgium, Sweden, Canada, Brazil and Australia".

"On the home front we supply to many major organisations, including Ford Motor Co, JCB, Jaguar Racing, BNFL, Rolls Royce, British Aerospace and Westland Helicopters for which we have recently been awarded Approved Supplier status".

"Much of this has been achieved by word of mouth recommendation", he added.

Since taking over the company Briggs has not let the grass grow under his feet.

Investment in two Walter 5-axis CNC grinders and a new CNC lathe over the past 3 years has enabled the company to increase capacity and meet increasing demand for specialist tooling".

"The Walter machines have enabled us to produce solid carbide specials to meet customer specifications", continued Briggs.

"We have many years' experience in design and manufacture of tooling and wanted to be able to offer the full spectrum of special tooling in indexible form, which previously we did not have the capacity to do".

"We, therefore, felt that it was right to make this investment, which has added a whole new dimension to our business as we are now able to offer assistance in all aspects of tooling".

"With the addition of the new CNC lathe we have achieved increased speed and efficiency of production, and new software enables us to offer re-grinding of all proprietary high performance drills, such as Sandvik, Kennametal etc".

"We have also developed a run-through holder for high speed reaming on machines with slightly less than accurate alignments".

In addition, having outgrown its original premises in Huddersfield, last year GR Booth moved to a new 12,000sqft site in Brighouse, which is also home to partner company J and P Tooling.

This has added further to efficiencies in production.

""The premises, including offices and production facility, were fitted out to our bespoke requirements, and I'm pleased to say that the move took place without any loss of production", concluded Paul Briggs.