Certification Boosts Shotton Group’s Manufacturing Capabilities The Shotton Group’s success story started in 1977, when founder Roy Shotton opened his family-owned business with nine employees. Today, the company boasts over 80 staff members, and has continued its strong focus on quality control and continuous improvement in the design, engineering and fabrication of metals. The company works with a range of customers across rail, bus, aviation, architectural, biomedical, forensic, and general infrastructure works. In line with their ongoing professional development, the Shotton Group was recently certified to AS/NZS ISO 3834 and EN 15085, which will help boost their manufacturing capabilities and bring a new list of clients on board.
According to Robert Lamb (Quality Systems and Work Health and Safety Manager, Shotton Group), family values remain at the heart of the company. “It’s still very much focused as a Shotton familybusiness. The company has its roots in the family, but we’re all very much a part of that family from the way that they treat their employees.” Shotton Group was a pioneer in securing high-level projects, which presented some challenges, but also generated growth and interest in the business from the very start. “They wanted to cater towards the types of work that nobody else was really looking at – jobs that were traditionally deemed ‘too difficult’. We’ve still got a little bit of that occurring today, but the dynamic of the business has changed substantially since its inception,” Lamb said. Forty-four years later, the business has leveraged its expertise and branched out into different areas. “When the business was first conceived, it was merely a fabrication business, working with welding sheet metal. We began working with smaller and Image: Shotton Group designs and manufactures hydraulic lifters from start to finish. Credit: Shotton Group.
medium-sized companies. In the present day, we are an all-inclusive business. We cover design and design support for manufacturing and assembly, which allows us to make a product in a more economical way,” Lamb said. “We can offer any size solutions. Whether it’s a complete solution, or just elements of what we do combined, we can tailor ourselves to suit our customers and their needs. We’re not scared of anything, which goes back to our founding principles that we’re happy to take on challenging and difficult tasks, because we have the capabilities to deliver where other similar businesses may not,” Lamb said. The company’s all-in approach has also allowed them to branch into international markets. Today, Shotton exports to the United States, including biomedical sheet metal components manufactured to the Food and Drug Administration’s high standards. NOTUS Project Saves Lives During COVID-19 The Shotton Group’s expertise was recently enlisted on the NOTUS project – a multinational conglomerate of companies that worked together in a partnership to provide ventilators for COVID-19 patients. Together, the partnership manufactured and delivered 2,100 ventilators across Australia. It was supported by a $31.3 million Federal Government supply contract. Overall, the project created or retained 250 jobs across the broad spectrum of suppliers. “We rapidly developed the ventilators, got them approved and then went through a series of manufacturing stages through the partners that were involved. It was a pretty quick turnaround, as we were working on a tight schedule,” Lamb explained. “We’re really proud of that particular collaboration
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Australian Welding
