Kit PetersPONTARDAWE: Town’s metals firm opens £2.5m plant that makes parts for jet engines
A Pontardawe firm that has been making specialist metal parts in the Swansea Valley since 1969 has opened a £2.5m facility it says will protect skilled local jobs — and let the town make components most of Britain has to buy from abroad.
Wall Colmonoy, which employs close to 200 people on the Alloy Industrial Estate, has opened the new plant at its European headquarters in the town.
The kit lets the firm make large, extremely pure metal parts — the kind used in aircraft engines and military equipment.
It does this by shaping the metal in a sealed, airless chamber. Keeping air away as the metal is poured stops it picking up impurities, which leaves the finished part far cleaner and stronger.
That matters because parts in a jet engine have to survive enormous heat and stress without failing. The cleaner the metal, the more they can be trusted to hold up.
The plant can cast parts weighing up to 200kg — and the firm says the furnace at its heart is one of the biggest of its kind available in the UK.
Until now, that sort of work has mostly been done by a small number of giant manufacturers, often overseas. The firm says its new plant means more of it can now be done here.
The facility was built with backing from two UK government defence programmes and developed alongside the engine maker Rolls-Royce.
It is the same operation the firm was building when it was shortlisted for two Swansea Bay Business Awards earlier this year.
The plant also uses what the firm calls “digital twin” technology — a computer model of the whole casting process. It lets engineers test and fine-tune a part on screen before any metal is poured, cutting waste and saving time.
The firm says it can also melt down old aircraft parts and turn them into new high-grade metal, which it says is a greener way of working.
Rob Davies, managing director of Wall Colmonoy, said the investment was “a significant step forward for our UK operations and for the wider manufacturing sector”.
He said it would let the company make advanced parts for aircraft and defence while keeping more of that skilled work in Britain.
The firm makes alloys, castings and precision parts used in aircraft, cars, defence and energy, and exports most of what it makes in Pontardawe around the world.
It says the new plant will protect skilled jobs at the site and create fresh opportunities in engineering.
The launch follows a run of investment at the Swansea Valley site, including £4.5m the firm put into new metal powders and a high-tech lab, and an earlier expansion helped by Welsh Government funding in 2021.
Wall Colmonoy, the European arm of an American family business, has been in Pontardawe for nearly 60 years and remains one of the area’s best-known industrial employers.
The firm says it has plenty of work lined up and expects the new plant to become an increasingly important part of what it does.
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