Plastic Injection Moulding Specialists. Est 1948.

Due to the reduced costs involved in overseas tooling in the late 90’s, S.B.Weston began forming international working relations enabling us to remain competitive when quoting customers on jobs requiring new tool manufacture.

The exchange rate at the time favoured Chinese tool makers who additionally benifited from the massively reduced costs of raw materials and labour in the far east, and as such were able to quote lower by around half than any equivalent UK tool making quote we received.

The scenario still exists although not to such a degree, with the UK tooling making industry reviving due to fluxuating exchange rates, and the collective industry experience of the potential negative aspects of tooling in the far east which can, in some project scenarios, prevent it being an option at all. The communication issues which occour when translating precision engineering practices from English to Chinese are obvious, but also factors such as extended delivery times, extorsionate shipping costs and in general the gamble of working ‘blind’ on a tool and only seeing it when it finally arrives in the UK to run are not desirable and can all be avoided if the client is prepared to expend some extra outlay and use the UK tooling service provided by our in-house team.

S.B.Weston have forged reliable working relationships with two Chinese tool making companies over the last 5 years. Both companys communicate well, and have delivered what we consider to be over-engineered tools, above the necessary standard of toolbuilding we would expect to get in this country for similar money.

We would always advocate our in-house toolmaking team over Chinese tool production – it allows a much more hands on toolmaking experience where the client can see all stages of the work involved and can be involved in problem solving as issues occour. Our inhouse team – Spectra Moulds – have worked with us for many years and have produced many of our long running, high earning product tools.