Responding to offshore demand
Hone-All Precision is actively engaged with the UK’s offshore oil and gas industry. The company’s niche expertise in deep hole drilling, boring and honing is particularly relevant to this sector of manufacturing, and the growth in demand for Hone-All’s services reflects its commitment to customers providing exploration and production equipment.
Colin Rodney, Managing Director, says: 'Oil and gas components typically involve difficult-to-machine materials such as high specification alloys and exotics that demand special applications knowledge and the right machines and tooling. When you are working with expensive materials and have relatively long cycle times, the last thing you need is a problem with a finish machining operation such as honing or any risk of damage or marking of the component. It’s not just the cost of the scrapped part; it’s the time needed to obtain replacement material and the difficulty of meeting the customer’s delivery date.'
According to the United Kingdom Offshore Operators Association (UKOOA), production from UK fields has the potential to satisfy 65% of the domestic demand for oil and a quarter of the domestic demand for gas in 2020...provided the UK can attract the investment required to sustain new exploration, development and production activity. This is the backdrop to September’s Offshore Europe 2009 event in Aberdeen - the largest upstream oil and gas exhibition and conference outside of the USA - where Hone-All Precision will be taking part to promote its expertise to what the organisers confidently predict will be a record number of international visitors.
Andrea Rodney, Director, says: 'We have built long-term relationships with key UK equipment suppliers to the oil and gas industry, and this has equipped Hone-All Precision with the necessary knowledge and experience to meet stringent quality requirements. In terms of machining capacity we can drill, bore, hone and turn components up to three metres long, and our investment in a new 20,000 sq. ft. factory has provided the quality controlled and efficient production facility necessary to compete successfully in a technology-driven environment such as oil and gas. The challenge for Hone-All Precision is to get this message across to a wider audience, which is why we are taking part in Offshore Europe.'
Although deep hole drilling, boring and honing remains Hone-All Precision’s core area - honing being the ideal process to achieve mirror finishes of 0.1microns Ra or 4microns CLA, the ISO 9001:2000-accredited company has in recent years expanded its range of machining and ancillary services. This enables the company to supply a finished component right through to the component marking that is included in the unit price, while the move to the new factory in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, has given fresh impetus to the drive to reduce manufacturing costs and cut lead times on high-value machined components.
