Recycling and reuse

Where our metal comes from

We buy sheet, plate and section from established UK and European stockholders, with material certification available on request.

Buying through reputable stockholders also means the mills behind our material are increasingly using recycled scrap and electric-arc furnaces, which is where the biggest carbon savings in steel actually happen.

Cutting waste before it's cut

We nest every laser job to reduce scrap, combining compatible parts where practical to use more of each sheet.

• Tight nesting on every job, so more of each sheet becomes parts and less becomes scrap.
• Remnant tracking: usable offcuts are kept and re-used for small parts and prototypes instead of cutting into fresh sheet.
• Right-first-time engineering review, so we're not re-cutting parts that were never going to fit.

What happens to the offcuts

Steel, stainless and aluminium are endlessly recyclable. The skeleton left after cutting, the unusable offcuts and any rejected parts are segregated by material and collected by a licensed metal recycler, so our scrap goes back into the melt rather than to landfill. Usable offcuts never reach the skip in the first place; they're set aside for the next small job.

Finishes that last

The most sustainable part is the one you never have to replace. Our in-house powder coating is a durable, weatherproof finish that protects steel for years outdoors, far longer than a quick coat of paint, so garden and outdoor pieces don't end up scrapped early. Powder coating is also a dry process with no solvents, and over-spray powder is reclaimed and re-used rather than washed away.

Made to order, in Andover

We make most of our work to order rather than mass-producing stock that may never sell. That means less over-production, and everything is designed, cut, formed and finished in one Hampshire workshop: no shipping half-finished parts around the country or the world between processes. Local making, shorter miles, less to go wrong.

Packaging sustainability

We reuse almost all of the packaging that comes into us with products we purchase, from boxes and void fill to pallets and plastics such as bubble wrap. This means lower packaging costs for your parts, and a lower carbon footprint for the manufacturing process. We have to purchase lots of packaging to make sure your parts arrive in perfect condition, but we try to minimise our footprint, by primarily using once used cardboard boxes, using paper void fill (no plastic, unless it was sent to us packaging something else, so we reuse it), and using paper tape so our boxes are fully recyclable.