UK Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne MP opened Swan House, the new 18,500 square feet purpose-built factory and office premises of Cygnet Group, parent of creels manufacturer, Texkimp Ltd. in February 2009. The opening marks a new era for a rapidly expanding family firm whose origins date back to the 1940s when Bill Kimpton formed WHK products to manufacture creels and beaming machines for the Lancashire cotton industry. Afflicted by union militancy in the late 1960s, WHK products was sold and Mr Kimpton’s daughter and son-in-law, Janet and Colin Smith launched Texkimp, focusing on the growing market for technical yarns.

Their son Matthew Kimpton-Smith now heads up the business, which has doubled in size over the last four years, employing almost 50 people and turning over £9m. As well as textiles, the firm is moving into new areas of engineering, including threadless pipe joining technology for marine oil and gas applications. The explosion in development of technical fibres, some of high value, has led to a requirement for unwinding systems that can cope with the differing characteristics of these materials, delivering yarn/tape with even tension, explains sales manager, David Barker.

“Carbon fibre yarns are becoming more sophisticated so it is more important than ever how you take the yarn from the package.” Driven unwinding systems are seeing increasing demand for a number of reasons. With package sizes increasing and due to the delicate nature of some yarns/tapes, there is also a tendency towards unrolling rather than overbend delivery systems.

“In the case of polypropylene tape, unrolling from 10-12kg packages at speeds of 300m/minute, you are dealing with a stretchy, sensitive material and too much tension can lead to breakage. Differential tensions in the warp threads can also affect the pattern. Motors on the bobbins allow yarns to be fed at constant tension.”

On a larger scale, creels supporting bobbins weighing 300kg or more, such as Texkimp’s VHD-F creel, are increasingly sought. The company will shortly install a 432-bobbin version of this creel in the US for a company where it will be used to unwind PAN (poly acryl nitrile) in preparation for the oxidation process which converts it into carbon fibre. As yarn packages grow larger, they are more susceptible to becoming unbalanced due to moisture settling at the base of the bobbin during transit. “This can lead to an overfeed situation – a driven unit compensates for this,” explains Mr. Barker. As well as the US, Texkimp also has customers for the VHD-F creel in China, Turkey and Taiwan. Overall, the company exports 99% of its products to countries including China, Vietnam, India, Korea, Russia, Poland, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Texkimp’s strategy is to look at the areas where it either has a superior product or offers better value for money, explains Mr Kimpton-Smith. “At the moment tyre cord is down but prospects for car tyres in the long term are good. We need to make sure we are calling on potential customers – these are moving to the Far East and low cost economies such as Vietnam and India.”

Carbon fibre applications will remain important to the business, he adds. “There are only 14-15 players globally - about four making high grade aviation textiles, the remainder are mid range industrial and lower grade.  “Aksa, the acrylic producer in Turkey, is one manufacturer working on moving from acrylic fibre production into industrial carbon fibre, which is a big step. The growth of carbon fibre will be exponential over the next 10 years.”

Forming partnerships will also be key to future success believes Mr Kimpton-Smith. “Last July we formed a partnership with Karl Mayer to manufacture tape creels. We can bring efficiency to the manufacturing. Karl Mayer was manufacturing 0-4 a year, each one slightly different. These small quantities fit perfectly with the size and structure of our business.”

Large yarn packages of several hundred kilos are also creating new opportunities. “Packages will go very big. Customers are coming to us asking about handling and we will put in handling devices.”

Spotting such changes in customer requirements and trying to meet them is part of the business ethos at Texkimp. “We have a relationship agent in every territory – not a technical expert – but their job is to relate to the customer and ensure we deliver exactly what they want.” And with a full order book for 2009, it is a strategy that appears to be working well for Texkimp.