Haines Watts working with Cube Precision Engineering

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Cube Precision Engineering

Cube Precision Engineering provides prototyping, design, simulation, manufacturing and full inspection, giving high profile customers across aerospace, automotive, defence and rail a single-source solution for its complex tooling requirements.

Business Success

Winning Young Business of the Year, at the Express and Star Business Awards in May 2013 was recognition from peers that Cube is at the forefront of press tool manufacture and subcontract machining within the UK manufacturing sector.

Through significant investment in the staff and the manufacturing plant Cube Precision Engineering has grown into a business with 40 employees and continues to grow from strength to strength.

"We thought we were getting everything out of the system, but it wasn’t until Haines Watts got involved that we realised this wasn’t the case. Since then, we have received funding based on more than £1.7m of R&D spend and this financial assistance has played a big part in making the investment in the MTE a simple one.”

As an owner-managed business, the team turned to Haines Watts in 2016 to support their ambitious expansion plans, utilising accountancy services and business advice.

The relationship has successfully developed over the last five years, with Cube Precision using Haines Watts specialists to create strategies on customer engagement, supplier management and boosting operational efficiencies.

"There has been lots of ‘off the clock’ support, time spent with us on developing systems that make life easier around key accountancy dates and, importantly, giving us access to its Owner Managed Business Network where we have met some great future contacts.”

As part of the Cube growth planning, they invested in a state-of-the-art multi-axis CNC milling centre to help it deliver £2m of new orders.

Other investments included £300,000 on a new MTE BF3200 that boosted capacity at its Rowley Regis facility and supported development of low to medium volume work for clients involved in the automotive and aerospace sectors.

The expert advice from the Haines Watts specialist R&D Tax Team unlocked R&D tax credit funding that has made the purchase of the new machinery possible. The new production capabilities are continuing to drive business growth in line with Cube Precision’s impressive plans.

Discover Cube Precision Engineering

Haines Watts Partner view

Cube Precision Engineering is one of the Black Country’s leading tooling experts and are looking to bounce back from the global pandemic by securing new contracts in the aerospace and automotive sector. Neil, Phil and the team have a clear vision and confidence that the firm’s ability to deliver quality products on time to their customers will be instrumental in winning and delivering the new work.

At Haines Watts, we have helped them by offering our continued support (not just throughout the pandemic) but having attended one of the quality of profits workshops, we have had continued “off the clock” follow up sessions with the business owners to offer them headspace to come into our offices to spend time “working on the business outside of the business”. This has generated new ideas, projects, efficiencies and actions for us both to take forward to provide a clear refreshed strategy.

Being a Partner in our Haines Watts Birmingham Office, I understand how challenging it is to run a business (and even more so over the last 18 months!) especially managing people, projects, new business pipeline and cash flow, therefore like all clients I have acted as a sounding board for the team at Cube to bounce any ideas off and then have offered them potential solutions to problems they have encountered along the way.

One area of government support that has been very beneficial to Cube’s growth since started building our relationship with the company in 2016 has been Research and development tax relief. With the company being able to handle single op prototype tooling to complex multi-stage tooling suites one project can be completely different from the next, the production and engineering team are innovative in the way they manufacture and deliver new tools to Tier 1 and Tier 2 customers providing prototyping, design, simulation, manufacturing and full inspection, giving high profile customers across the aerospace, automotive, defence and rail a single-source solution for their complex tooling requirements. Our proactive Tax advice around this has also being beneficial to ensure no projects have been missed and the team have been remunerated tax efficiently.

As we encounter the post-pandemic world and easing of restrictions, we look to continue to build on our relationship with the company by showcasing their work and introducing them to other manufacturing and engineering companies within our network and client base of over 35,000 business owners across the UK.

Andrew Jones, Partner

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