wiredinUSA September 2015

Connecting acquisition

Capacity investment

Delphi Automotive Plc, the former car parts unit of General Motors Co, has agreed to buy the England-based manufacturer of ties, insulation and protection systems for automotive cable, HellermannTyton Group Plc. Rupert Stadler, chief executive officer of Audi AG, recently stated that digital services will have the most impact on the auto industry’s technology development in coming years. Of the $1.7 billion HellermannTyton acquisition, Delphi said the purchase will help it capitalize on growing demand for cars that connect to mobile phones and other devices. “Delphi continues to be focused on the car of the future,” added Chris McNally, an analyst at Evercore ISI in London. “It’s leading this charge into the connected-cars space.” In a conference call, Kevin Clark, Delphi’s CEO, said that: “The opportunity is really big for our connector business to expand outside the auto industry. The capability of HellermannTyton and its strength of sales give us a great opportunity to sell more of our connector products.”

UK manufacturer Alloy Wire has invested over £700,000 to boost productivity at two of its sites. The company has installed three Zwick tensile and hardness testing machines, PMI material X-ray guns, a fully automated multi-spindle spooling machine, a 5m strand annealing furnace and a bespoke wire finishing line. The additional facilities will double Alloy Wire’s capacity. MD Mark Venables commented: “Our success has been down to our ability to take on small batch quantities, fast response times and the fact we can manufacture in more than 60 different alloys, including Inconel, Nimonic, Incoloy, Hastelloy, and Ni-Span C902.” Established in 1946, Alloy Wire is a manufacturer of precision drawn round wire, flat wire and shaped wire in a range of high performance and exotic nickel alloys. The company, which is now 100 percent staff-owned, supplies wire from 0.025mm (0.001”) to 21mm (0.827”).

wiredInUSA - September 2015

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