A steady increase in production demand throughout 2024 and into 2025 has led Pentagon Plastics to make a notable change to its production capacity. For over 20 years the UK based Plastic Injection Moulder has operated across a two-shift pattern with the factory operating 16 hours a day but from early February capacity is being extended across 24 hours.
The company says this is a huge milestone in its 53-year history of trading, the increased demand is being driven by the medical (non-clean room moulding) and aerospace sectors which continue to grow at pace. Pentagon is a technical injection moulder and the components that are manufactured on site are often part of larger assemblies, and commonly from engineering grades of thermoplastics.
The third production shift will help to ensure that high volume medical mouldings continue to meet increasing customer demand while opening capacity on larger presses for new business going forward. The shift will be overseen by one of the groups longest serving employees who has been with the organisation since infancy.
Pentagon claims that UK Manufacturing services still feel highly under utilised, despite Brexit delivering a positive wave of change in the form of re-shoring and companies and design engineers looking to source UK suppliers, there is still a way to go to ensure the longevity and continued growth of this sector.
One of the key areas is the long running issues of bridging the skills gap, which Pentagon says is of particular importance to the company. It says continued lack of duly experienced toolmakers and precision engineers and the difficulty of balancing apprenticeships and development with revenue producing work streams and resources.
Pentagon says it prides itself on offering in-house mould tool manufacture and tooling services, an offering that it says is not readily available from UK injection moulders. Pentagon says this gives customers a full turnkey solution for their plastic injection moulding projects and a single point of contact for the life of their products and projects.
