“Forsstrom stood shoulder to shoulder with us in our hour of need. They are not a supplier to Union, they are part of our family.”

We asked our customer Union Industries in the UK to share their story with us.

Union Industries was founded by Paul and Isobel Schofield, Mr & Mrs S as they are affectionally known, in 1972. They identified early on the advantages of High Frequency welding and purchased the first Forsstrom machine in the early 1980’s. This machine and the others that followed it were the cornerstone of Union’s development of their class leading range of high speed doors.

The Forsstrom machines performed perfectly for more than 30 years. They were in daily use and needed nothing more than routine servicing.

In 2015 we opened a new manufacturing facility, we filled it with state of the art equipment and took that opportunity to replace our old, faithful and still fully working, High Frequency welders. The replacements were, of course, Forsstrom machines. We didn’t just blindly order though; we went to exhibitions spoke to other HF users and really explored the market for the best equipment.

Our investigations always led back to Forsstrom products, so we ordered three brand new machines with bed length between 10 and 20 meters.

As before our Forsstrom machines performed flawlessly and our new factory provided the platform for better productivity and to underpin our service first philosophy for our blue chip customer base.

Then the unthinkable happened, a faulty extractor fan in the workshop rest room started a fire that decimated the new facility and all of our HF welders. This was potentially a disaster, loosing our entire manufacturing base decimated our capability and put, for the first time ever, our delivery dates in jeopardy. At times like this the true nature of a company comes to the fore, our employees salvaged what they could from the fire ravaged building and the very next day they were assembling our products in the car park so that we wouldn’t miss a delivery date.

Its not just about our people, the HF welders were critical to our business on a day to day level. On the very next day, after the fire, Forsstrom’s UK distributor was on site assessing the machines and looking for ways to help us. The machines were totally destroyed but a loan machine was found and within a few days it was installed in a temporary facility and we were producing again.

In parallel with the loan machine Forsstrom rushed replacement machines through their already very busy factory and in record time we had a brand new machine up and working.

When looking at machines of any kind there will always be common features, sometimes slick sales people and maybe special offers. My advice to anyone, based on our experience, would be to look beyond the metal, who is the company behind the product, what’s their ethos and if you need them will they be by your side? This might be to resolve a breakdown, improve a process or, as in our case, help us recover from a disaster.

Forsstrom stood shoulder to shoulder with us in our hour of need. They are not a supplier to Union, they are part of our family.

Thank you Andrew Lane, Union Industries, for sharing this nice story.