Ulster Shredders – 30 years of experience.
Based at Castledawson Magherafelt, Ulster Shredders has over thirty years-experience in this field currently manufacturing a range of shredding machines which can be adapted to suit a client’s needs.
With waste management now an integral part of every organisation’s core activities, Ulster Shredders’ role is to help each customer handle their processing and shredding needs efficiently and cost effectively, whether it be plastic, electronic media, documents, wood or other on-site shredding requirements.
With over thirty years-experience, and a global customer base that ranges from SMEs and office centres to large scale industrial plants, Ulster Shredders have an unparalleled breadth of experience in the field of advanced industrial shredders. This means that they can design, deliver and install full turnkey shredding solutions to handle practically any product, in any environment, worldwide.
Their success is based on their ability to evaluate specific situations and then deliver precise solutions with the aim to help customers achieve measurable bottom line improvements: savings in manpower costs through reduced material handling reduced transportation costs from moving compacted material improved corporate security and particularly with document disposal new revenue streams from sale of shredded waste.
The HUB-4 team sat down with the MD – Elliott Martin who gave us the whole story. “We moved into our current premises six years ago from our old factory in Ballyclare and have been producing an average of 50 machines per year. Moving to the new factory gave us 43,000 square feet for production including machining, turning, vertical and horizontal CNC milling and surface grinding. Two new paint spray booths completed everything we need to ensure the complete manufacture of shredders.
“Over the last six years turnover has trebled, and we have added to our machine range, offering bespoke systems and complimentary equipment including conveyors and material handling equipment. We invested £3 million when we moved, and it has successfully underpinned our desire to expand and ensure high quality products.
“Our state-of-the-art engineering facility here in Castledawson houses several complete shredding lines. These allow our engineers to perform throughput and consistency testing by conducting trials, tests and demonstrations of our customers’ materials under real production conditions.”
Bespoke Systems:
We went on a tour of the factory and could clearly see that the engineering capability, from concept design through to final product assembly and performance testing, offers a unique one-stop-shop solution.
It’s very true that often the success of a shredder depends not only on the horsepower which drives it, but also on how the product to be shredded is fed and discharged from it. Ulster Shredders not only designs and supplies stand-alone machines including complete turnkey recycling systems, tailored to the customer’s specific needs but their Design and R&D Department have repeatedly implemented cost-effective solutions to satisfy customers’ unique requirements.
Employing up-to-date 2D and 3D Solidworks CAD systems to support the design and research and development of its products the company utilises Autodesk Inventor, a 3D solid modelling and 2D draughting software package. This allows virtual 3D modelling of components along with the creation of 2D manufacture drawings directly from the model thus ensuring very high design/manufacturing integrity and reduced product design lead times.
By utilising AutoCAD software, the company can readily interface with other third-party software, providing direct engineering information transfer with their customers.
Elliott, continued, “In terms of personnel we have 19 operatives with an additional design engineer starting shortly. It’s a good team with the right skill sets and we make it work very well.
Elliott then outlined the company’s sales strategy, “Although our main market is the UK our overseas market is growing. We do very well in Finland selling through a Powerscreen dealer and also a dealer in South Africa; both sell around 10 machines a year currently.
“We also have new dealers in Spain, France and Portugal and we are working on those to increase sales.”
Elliott then told us about some of their UK clients, “We have had a number of customers who have come back to us which is very encouraging as they obviously love the product and our service.
“We have recently done repeat business with Evermore Energy a power station in Londonderry where they shred oversize wood, also Augean plc and two other customers in the USA all to shred IBC tanks.
“Euro Recycling in Avonmouth Bristol who process confidential material have bought a few machines over the years and Highlander in Scotland who are also in the same business have recently outgrown the system we supplied and have now ordered a bigger machine.”
With a wide range of machines from the U-5 to the largest and most recent addition the U-200, Ulster Shredders can offer machines across a wide range of applications from confidential document and hard drive shredding to processing large volumes of waste prior to sorting and recovery. Even furniture, construction timber and steel drum are not beyond the capabilities of the U-200.
Whether its Confidential Destruction-Volume Reduction-Production Processing then Ulster Shredders are building their reputation day-by-day!