In 1987 when Mark and Gerri Foster set up their furniture business in a small Wigan industrial unit , they didn’t imagine that some 20 years later they would move back " to their roots " in a new 28,000sq ft factory, a few hundred yards from the original premises. The Company, originally setup with a grant from the Princes Trust, concentrated on Mark Foster's background of french polishing. They became well known furniture restorers in the North West, and after 2 subsequent factory moves from old cotton mills, Polished With Pride have grown and evolved to be one of the UK's leading suppliers of bespoke kitchen and bedroom doors, manufacturing and supplying approx 2500 vinyl wrapped and painted doors per week. The Company now employ 35 people but is still very much a "hands on" family business, with Mark overseeing the whole operation, his wife Gerri looking after sales and daughter Bridget in charge of marketing.Over the last 6 months, PWP has undertaken a major £750,000 expansion programme which has seen them move to a new state of the art premises, and make substantial investments in new high tech machinery. This has allowed them to move the business further forward into new market sectors with shopfitting contractors, retailers, and house builders.By far the biggest investment , is the installation of a Cefla Spraybotic Spraying and Drying Line supplied by J J Smith of Liverpool. Mark Foster takes up the case " To keep pace with technology, flexibilty, quick set up, and possible high volumes of idenitcal doors, we wanted to purchase a lacquer line that would give us all this, and have the ability of spraying Hi-gloss lacquer and P.U lacquer systems which is becoming increasingly popular. " Following a visit to the Cefla factory in Imola in Italy, where extensive tests were carried out , the decision was taken to go ahead, and the line was ordered. It has recently been installed and commissioned by Cefla technicians. The Spraybotic is fitted with 5 spray guns, 4 of which are used for vertical spray applications,and the 5th used specifically for edge spraying. It can be used in 2 modes - one for conventional reciprocating finishing, and the other as a special purpose programmable CNC Robot. The high quality finishing achieved derives from the absolute spraying precision, as the guns follow the panel shape, on surface and edge, after reading and memorising of the work piece dimensions and position. Mark further comments "The Cefla” has really opened a lot of new doors for us [no pun intended ] and offers the facility to finish in excess of 300 doors per hour, in thousands of different colours, which gives us a distinctive edge over our competitors." A second SCM Ergon Multi Head CNC Router, an Italfer Pack Shrink wrap line, and a dedicated Dust Extraction System complete the current investment programme.
