Central Wire Industries embraces new opportunities and advancements that make us a well-rounded specialty alloy wire supplier meeting the needs of a variety of industries. While we continue to look forward we haven’t forgotten our industrial roots and are proud to have a connection to them with CWI UK, our plant in Rotherham, a stone’s throw from Sheffield. CWI acquired Hempel Wire Industries Rotherham, UK facility in 2015, which added new IP, shaped profile wire, and other products.
Sheffield was often called Steel City and was once the undisputed metalworking capital of the world. It has been known for its cutlery production for nearly 800 years, but it became one of the world’s industrial capitals in the 1700s when new techniques were developed there that revolutionized the steel industry.
First was the crucible steel process, the first method of casting steel bars, producing a tougher, steel that had consistent, reliable quality. It also could be produced in larger quantities. Benjamin Huntsman’s technique led Sheffield from producing 200 tons of steel a year to 20,000 tons.
Soon after Thomas Boulsover, a cutlery maker, created silver plate. He happened upon a temperature for fusing silver and copper and found them compatible for manipulation. This faux silver was obviously cheaper and became popular, allowing the working class to showcase their own silver teapots, candlesticks and cutlery.
More than 100 years later Sheffield would again be at the center of a steel-industry revolution when Henry Bessemer perfected a special furnace to super-heat iron and refine the metal to steel. The process lowered the production cost of steel and thus increased an industrializing world’s ability to acquire and use it.
Maintaining its reputation as a place for innovation, the formula and process for making stainless steel were developed by Harry Brearley in the steelmaking labs of Sheffield in the early 1900s.
Brearley ran into considerable resistance when trying to sell the steel that rusted and stained less. It was as if only he could see its potential value. He said:
“The range of the mind’s eye is restricted by the skill of the hand. The castles in the air must conform to the possibilities of material things—border-line possibilities perhaps; or, if something beyond the known border is required, the plan must wait until other dreams come true.”
Eventually, his persistence paid off. Where other low-carbon chromium-iron alloys didn’t take off, Brearley teamed with his cutlery-making friends to prove what he had immediately thought—this rust-resistant steel would be brilliant for knives. It would eventually find other uses—anywhere that corrosion would be an issue, including power generation, oil and gas, construction and food production industries.
Brearley is known as the Father of Modern Metal, and we think of him as our forefather and Sheffield as our ancestral home. From that beginning CWI now produces more than 40 grades of stainless steel wire, used for everything from fine jewelry to aerospace components. Bessemer, Brearley and the others would be proud.
It is difficult to imagine that counterfeiters copying patented and trademarked goods from halfway around the world affect your business, employees and customers, but they do. The theft of intellectual property patents, trademarks and copyrightscreates a negative chain reaction that can include the loss of revenue, jobs, brand integrity and safety.
On a global scale, counterfeit products sometimes known as knock-offs cost billions of dollars every year. That estimated cost has grown from $5.5 billion in 1982 to $600 billion presently, a staggering 10,000 percent increase. It’s more than purses and jeans. Knock-offs have crept into the alloy wire industry, which produces critical components of products that affect every aspect of our lives—from medical equipment to bridges, from toasters to cars. The repercussions from using counterfeit metals and wires could be dire.
A company can implement numerous safeguards to protect its intellectual property (IP):
With unscrupulous counterfeiters tempting and deceiving companies with lower prices, how can you protect your process, employees and reputation? And perhaps more importantly, how do you protect the safety of your products and avoid the possible dire consequences of having a device or piece of equipment fail because of inferior metal “knock-offs”?
As a business buying goods, you can also take extra precautions against counterfeit materials.
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Counterfeiters and their fraudulent products can be catastrophic to many parties and undoubtedly to a company’s reputation. A little bit of time spent researching the legitimacy of your suppliers, their product origins and quality standards is well worth the effort in helping to combat trademark and IP fraud. Also, it can ensure the safety of your workers and others and preserve the good standing and trustworthiness of your company within your industry.
This is the second blog on trademark counterfeiting. Read “Copycats and costly catastrophes: A dangerous supply chain game” for more information.
Stealing intellectual property (IP) or using counterfeit branded products, whether it’s a designer purse or a special metal alloy, can result in devastating consequences to the end user.
Companies spend considerable effort, time, and money in creating new products for customer benefit. This intellectual property is often patented and/or trademarked. The latter action is undertaken to create brand names for customers to readily identify the products they want and need. A trademarked product acts as a type of insurance, but buyers need to do their homework to ensure that they are getting what they paid for and are not using an inferior and potentially dangerous “knock-off”.
Counterfeits and knock-offs are a multi-billion dollar a year industry that has grown from a vendor selling goods out of the back of his truck to the vast globalized supply chain that has descended upon us in the last 25 years, and has unwittingly provided an infinite number of enticing illegal opportunities for counterfeiters to embrace.
So why is incorporating counterfeit metals into your production process or end use playing a dangerous game?
Knock-offs have crept into the alloy wire industry which produces critical components utilized in the medical, aerospace, oil & gas, appliance, electronics, mining, automotive and a host of other industries, touching every aspect of our lives. In fact, the majority of the goods we consume on a daily basis carry some elements of metal, from the smart phones buzzing in our pockets to the intricate leading edge medical wire MIT researchers have used to develop an implantable device that recognizes which drugs are compatible for eradicating cancerous tumors. In this precarious situation, using a “knock-off” metal could result in dire consequences, and possibly even death for an individual already struggling to survive.
Industrial infrastructure that we depend on in our daily lifestyles is often tied to proper use of trademarked materials and the benefits they incur to the end users. The creation of industry standards for commercial materials, such as the Unified Numbering System (UNS) for metals and alloys to systematically designate them by composition, “does not guarantee any performance specifications or exact composition with impurity limits.” Quality and performance variances exist from supplier to supplier within any given alloy, despite the classification system used to identify and source them.
Leading manufacturers of metals and metal products, like Central Wire Industries (CWI) employ process trade secrets to ensure quality, tight tolerances and/or discernable special properties of final product grades. CWI goes to great lengths to ensure the integrity and quality of raw materials in their supply chain, especially when the final product carries a globally recognizable trademark or brand name like GDTM and SUPAâ used in oil and gas wireline and slickline applications. Many end users test and approve these products and include the trademarked brand names in their final purchase specification and such is the case for several grades of the GDTM and SUPAâ family of products. Only CWI plants are authorized to make these trademarked products and select distributors and agents then act as resellers around the world to ensure stock availability and on-time delivery.
Specialty alloy slicklines are designed to perform in very harsh and corrosive conditions, and with varying degrees of mechanical stress in wells. Oil and gas wells around the world are being drilled to almost unthinkable depths, with the deepest well completed by Exxon Nefegus in 2012 measuring an astounding 12,376 meters (40,604 ft.) The strength, quality, and reliability of metals required to withstand the severe operating pressures, temperatures, loads and chemical environments at these depths is crucial in order to avoid catastrophic events such as failed equipment, loss of production, or even loss of human life or environmental disasters.
Using products from un-approved suppliers or trademark counterfeiters can result in product liability claims due to: equipment failure, loss of production and/or costly repairs or fishing jobs, and possibly structural and environmental catastrophes. Even worse is the prospect of worker injury should the inferior metals purchased from deceitful suppliers fail during use. These consequences of failure can be greatly compounded in environmentally sensitive areas such as offshore drilling.
In today’s globalized supply chain environment, raw materials can be procured from any number of sources and due diligence is required to guarantee not only trademark ownership, but also the absence of conflict minerals. Subsequently, minerals can be melted almost anywhere in the world including numerous locations in new or developing economic regions and countries, where industrial and commercial trade practices may not meet recognized supply chain integrity standards.
With unscrupulous counterfeiters tempting or deceiving companies with lower prices and availability of specialty alloys, how can you police the fair use of your trademarked products and the integrity of the brands? Quality suppliers want to ensure the safe use of their products, and maximize customer user experience. The next blog in this series will explore how manufacturers and customers can both protect trademarks and ensure that they are getting what they paid for from metal melt to finished product.
Note: GDTM and SUPA® are trademarks of Central Wire Industries Ltd.
August 26, 2016 – Perth, Ontario, Canada - Central Wire Industries (CWI) is pleased to announce the acquisition of Sanlo, Inc. (Sanlo), a manufacturer and distributor of galvanized and stainless wire rope, custom extruded products, and engineered cable assemblies located in Michigan City, Indiana.
Please click here for the news release in PDF format.
Dusseldorf, we miss you already! Central Wire Industries UK had the opportunity to display at Wire 2016. Previously known as Hempel Wire Ltd, CWI purchased the company in 2015 and was very excited to showcase their wide range of Stainless Steels / Nickel alloys / Non-Ferrous wires - spring wires, profiles, slicklines, ropes and cables.
It was a huge event that brought together numerous industry professionals. Thank-you to all our international agents that were with us to assist in building new relationships and connecting with the visitors to our stand. Over the course of the five day show we met business experts and customers from all around the globe in industries such as nuclear, aerospace, medical, automotive and oil and gas sectors.
Wire 2016 was the perfect time to launch our newest innovation, our mobile CWI APP. This new technology provides on-thego access to important information and services related to your business needs. With the 60 inch touch screen-feature available this allowed visitors to draw their desired profile/shape and submit the design to CWI. Guests visit the CWI booth at Wire 2016 With a great number of new connections and many more requests for information by mail, CWI is happy to report the success of Wire 2016. Keep a close eye on us for Wire Dusseldorf 2018, CWI plans on being the biggest, and best ever!