Record £100m+ contract win lifts specialist brakes maker Surface Transforms

Prospects for Knowsley-based specialist brakes manufacturer, Surface Transforms, have improved after it announced a new order worth more than £100m over a seven year period.

Last month the firm, which makes carbon fibre reinforced ceramic brakes for high performance cars, as well as aircraft, announced that it hoped to break even this financial year after making a £5.5m pre-tax loss for the first half.

But today it said it had been selected as a tier one supplier of a carbon ceramic brake disc to its existing mainstream customer described previously as OEM 10, one of the world’s largest automotive OEMs (original equipment manufacturer).

The selection is for Surface Transforms to be the sole supplier of the carbon ceramic brake disc on both axles of a range of new electric vehicles with common axles.

The award covers vehicles where the product is standard fitment as well as vehicles where it is an option.

The lifetime revenue on this range of models is expected to exceed £100m with series production planned for seven years. The company expects series production to commence in 2027.

The vehicle range was part of the company’s substantial prospective contract pipeline which, having now converted, increases the value of Surface Transforms’ awarded lifetime contracts to more than £390m.

This OEM 10 contract will require capacity beyond both the current factory footprint and the phase 2 capacity investment programme, forecast to provide £75m per year sales capacity in 2025.

The timing of this award gives the company sufficient time to implement the third phase of its capacity expansion to provide £150m per year of total sales capacity.

Planning for this third phase continues to be actively progressed.

CEO, Kevin Johnson, said: “This most welcome nomination, is the company’s largest to date, deepening our relationship with the customer.

“The selection process was intensely competitive and set against the recent Surface Transforms production ramp-up challenges.

“This success further illustrates the advanced technical capabilities of our products. The trend for follow-on awards with existing customers is something we have seen across all our customers.”

He added: “Our healthy prospective contract pipeline is mainly made up of existing customer programmes and is expected to continue to fuel our growth and capacity expansion plans into the future.”