Bending and cutting at Gresham Office Furniture

UK furniture manufacturer, Gresham Office Furniture, has brought all its metal furniture component manufacture in-house following the purchase of a new electric press brake and tube laser/flat-bed fibre laser cutting systems.

===

One of the largest independent designers and manufacturers of workspace furniture in the UK, Gresham Office Furniture, operates from a 200,000 square-foot factory on a 14-acresite in Bolton (UK). In early 2025, three more machines were installed at the site from BLM Group UK, a subsidiary of the Italian tube and sheet metalworking machine manufacturer. 

The equipment supplied was a tube laser-cutting machine (which joined a BLM tube bender installed seven years earlier), a flat-bed fibre laser cutting machine and an electric press brake. The installation of these systems has enabled Gresham Office Furniture to bring all metal furniture component manufacture in-house, whereas previously two-thirds was outsourced to subcontractors.

David Openshaw, Operations Manager, Gresham Office Furniture, commented: “The BLM acquisitions were part of a £7-million investment last year that also included a new enterprise resource planning system and a Homag line for processing wood-based panels, which accounted for nearly two-thirds of the spend.

“Insourcing all our metal component manufacture has been a major benefit as Brexit, swiftly followed by COVID-19 and the start of the Ukraine war, all played into a lengthening of lead-times from our subcontractors. Gresham prides itself on quick deliveries to customers (10-15 days from receipt of order), so we wanted total control over the supply of all office furniture components. Our latest investments have delivered exactly that,” he continued.

The production team in Bolton was keen that all sheet and tube working machines on the shop floor should be from the same supplier, as modern manufacturing demands a high level of digital integration. It is particularly important that the tube bender can feed back data to the tube laser. BLM was chosen as the supplier due to a successful pre-existing working relationship, which originally dated back to 2001 with the arrival of a hydraulic BLM tube bender (which is still in operation today).

To read the rest of this article in the April 2026 issue of ISMR, see https://joom.ag/oVvd/p24