How one family firm is engineering its way through the crisis

From keeping a wide range of industries supplied with essential parts, to now keeping us safe, the innovative pivot made by one family engineering business could be a game changer.

Design and manufacturing firm Sylatech, which is based in North Yorkshire, has enjoyed 56 years at the forefront of engineering services, with customers spanning aerospace, space, defence, medical, automotive and construction.

Commercial director Gordon Gunn is a current delegate of our Productivity through People leadership course. He shared the challenges his business has faced due to the global pandemic, and how the firm’s culture of innovation, research and development and expertise in metals manufacturing has led it to a ground-breaking product, which helps to keep us safe, as well as generate a new business stream and client base.

The challenge

A sizeable portion of Sylatech’s market and customer base was in the aerospace industry, and naturally with world events this has seen a sharp downturn. With this market not expected to return to former levels any time soon, Gordon has had to re-forecast, re-shape the business strategy and furlough staff.

The opportunity

Sylatech has historically supplied a very wide range of industries with metal parts and microwave systems and components. These included parts for the glass industry, medical industry, rail tracks and even bionic hands and clarinet keys.

But another key feature at Sylatech is its active and ongoing research and development (R&D) function, working closely with universities on product design and development.

Based on existing knowledge around the anti-microbial properties of copper alloys, Gordon revived a product idea which had previously been considered but not launched. It’s a product which acts as an intermediary between our hands and other surfaces, to protect us against coronavirus.

Fast action

The name “KeepSafe” was chosen. The product was created, and testing has now revealed that, on a copper alloy, the virus viability was completely eliminated within ten minutes.

Given the urgent requirement and immediate benefits to society that could be achieved from this product, the wheels of production, testing, online shop, marketing, PR and sales had to move very quickly.

This meant moving into a different arena for Gordon who previously operated in the business-to-business (B2B market. The KeepSafe is relevant to both B2B and business-to-consumer (B2C) audiences, making marketing the product more challenging.

The future

“Our challenge is to step up the PR and boost our awareness of the product. We’ve already been featured in some of the national papers, but we need to do more,” Gordon said.

With other pioneering innovations currently in R&D stage at Sylatech, including a plastics recycling solution and a burns assessment tool for the medical industry, the KeepSafe experience shows what can be done.

“We had to pack a huge amount of learning and new experiences into an incredibly short time scale” explained Gordon. “We prototyped, tested, manufactured, named, branded and created an ecommerce site in the space of three weeks.”

“As far as pivoting goes, we are really proud to have used our skills, capability and culture of innovation to create something that can make a real difference to the war against this virus.”

Leadership course experience

As a delegate of the Be the Business Productivity through People course, Gordon pointed to how useful the course has been in terms of high quality teaching, access to leading businesses – including a site visit to Siemens – and working with a network of other like-minded leaders, hearing their challenges and solutions.

“The quality of training and teachers was very strong, and it was useful to discuss leadership, strategy and operations with them and business peers. With most people in the UK employed by SMEs, the course content is highly valuable to SME leaders. I look forward to when the course can resume face to face and exploring survival, resilience and business opportunities with the trainers and delegates.”