ABOUT

 

 

Over 40 Years of Innovative Bearing Solutions

In 2010 BNL celebrated 40 years as a market leading plastic bearing designer and manufacturer. Below is a short history of BNL and how the BNL name became synonymous with innovative and high-quality plastic bearing products across the globe.

 

Founded in 1970

 

BNL was founded in 1970 by David Garnett as Bearings Non-Lube Limited. Customers shortened this to BNL and the name has stuck. Widely recognised as the inventor of the fully-moulded plastic bearing, David Garnett introduced BNL plastic bearings as a viable and in many cases preferable alternative to steel bearings.

Early Markets

Initially BNL encountered scepticism towards the use of plastics in engineering but quickly overcame this by using technical expertise and plastics design knowledge to offer innovative cost-saving solutions.

At first our key markets were the more traditional bearing users within sectors such as conveyor systems, food handling & processing, film processing, sliding doors, filing cabinets & furniture.  Whilst BNL products have become more complex and diverse over the years, we still cater for these markets and product ranges for most these applications have merged into our Standard Product catalogue.

 

 

Bespoke Design

We soon found a demand for custom designed and manufactured plastic bearings and assemblies. By studying a product or project brief, we were able to make proposals that would offer technical, production or cost improvements. BNL’s ability to integrate a plastic bearing into a complex assembly of other components through clever design and moulding techniques, soon brought the company to the attention of multi-national OEMs in large scale industries such as photocopier manufacture, the automotive industry and CCTV manufacture.

Browse through our diverse range of plastic bearing applications.

Over the past 40 years our focus has never waivered from the provision of innovative design and products that do not simply replace steel bearings but improve and add value to the bearing function. This added-value approach has been the foundation for our success over the years.

As the use of thermoplastics in engineering steadily grew, the name BNL became synonymous with high-quality plastic bearings and inventive assemblies. Our customer base began to contain more and more OEMs and market leaders who came to trust BNL to deliver effective integrated solutions for their projects.

1978

 

Initially, BNL grew its export sales through a network of distributors across Europe and the USA. These relationships have developed over time to form a well established global network of long-standing distribution partners, such as Eriks, RS Components and Brammer.

As our overseas markets developed and BNL products became more complex in design and operation, our customer base began to require a more direct approach and access to local engineering resources. BNL began to physically expand into new territories, establishing its first overseas subsidiary in the USA in 1978.


BNL’s success has been recognised in many ways over the years, notably, the Queens Award for Export Achievement awarded to us in 1978. BNL is also proud to have received certification from our customers in recognition of our delivery times, high quality, environmental achievements and chemical safety compliance. BNL holds ISO 9001:2000, ISO/TS 16949:2002 and ISO 14001:2004 and BNL Thailand achieved it ISO 9001:2008 certification in 2009, ensuring all BNL products are of a high quality.

 

1982

 

The company had its first home on the Thorpe Arch Trading Estate in Wetherby, relocating to Knaresborough, North Yorkshire in 1982. This site is now BNL’s global HQ and UK manufacturing site. From this UK foundation, we have built up a global customer-base and in 2010 approximately 80% of all products manufactured at the UK site are exported.

 

1988

 

BNL established a French arm of the business, Poly Roulements, in 1988. Other outposts in Germany, Spain and Italy followed.

Looking for an ‘innovative engineering company’ to form part of the group’s ‘Special Product Division’, Henry Barratt Group purchased BNL in 1988 for £7.5m and retained David Garnett as MD. David Garnett subsequently re-purchased BNL in a MBO in 1991.

 

1995

 

In 1995 BNL was acquired by Swiss-based engineering group Sarna AG and renamed Sarnatech BNL. Whilst already posessing strong sales resources in Europe, the additional access to Sarna’s network made the BNL brand a well known name across Europe for superior plastic bearings and excellent technical design and production abilities.

 

1996

 

BNL continued to grow throughout this period and the Knaresborough factory and office space was extended in 1996 to boost capacity for the increased demand we were experiencing. Capacity has been increased several times since then and the UK site now has thirty-two moulding machines producing BNL parts. For more information on BNL's recent expansion see BNL News pages.

 

2001

 

BNL’s Asia-Pacific market had, up to 2001, been covered by a Sales Representative, who had been promoting BNL products with great success. In 2001, we cemeted our presence in these territories through the foundation of a new overseas subsidiary in Tokyo, Japan.

 

2005

 

 

Acquired by Plastics Capital plc from the Sarna Group in 2005, the ‘Sarna’ prefix was dropped and the company became BNL (UK) Limited. BNL now forms part of Plastics Capital’s niche plastics portfolio.

 

 

2007

 

In 2007 BNL purchased Cobb Slater Ltd., a plastic bearing and technical moulding company. This allowed BNL to add to its product portfolio and increase its share of the UK market.

 

2008

In 2008 we opened a second manufacturing site in Thailand to cater for our growing number of customers in the Asia-Pacific region – BNL (Thailand) Ltd. This second manufacturing site has allowed us to shorten our supply chain process and increase production capacity as our Asia-Pacific client base grows. The seven new mouding machines installed in the Thailand factory bring BNL's total moulding machine count to forty.

 

2009

In 2009 BNL established the New Technology Centre to develop understanding of polymer tribology and its application to plastic bearings and related components. Now well known for our plastic bearing products and designs, BNL is a less recognised provider of complementary parts such as polymer gears and plastic shafts. The New Technology Centre is working with leading academic and independent institutions in the gearing, tribology and polymer research fields, to establish standards and capabilities in these technologies. Our customers can then reap the rewards of increased product functionality and cost reductions in manufacture.

 

2010 - 2011

Our continued expansion in 2010 and 2011 saw the establishment of: Shanghai Plastic Capital Trading Ltd.

Our growing markets in this region mean we now needed a more established presence to support our growing customer base. A subsidiary of BNL's parent company Plastics Capital, the China office includes sales, design and technical support for BNL in the region.

Our US operations also received a boost with the establishment of new warehousing on the East Coast. This means that BNL (USA) Inc. are now well placed to efficiently meet the requirements of our US customers across the whole country.

 

2012 & The Future

 

We will be increasing our product portfolio with complementary and integrated components currently being developed through our New Technology Centre.

BNL already provides a range of mating and complementary components to plastic bearings to form integrated sub-assemblies - components such as gears, shafts, bushes, etc. We already possess significant knowledge of the design and manufacture of these components from their use in our assemblies and we are developing this knowledge to offer our customers a more diverse range of key products and value-engineered solutions.

We are have also revamped our standard product range so we can offer more high quality parts to our existing markets and prove ourselves as a supplier of superior quality bearings in our new territories.