By changing to Castrol, cold rolling specialist JB and S Lees is saving GBP 30,000 a year and improving the working environment for its mill operators. JB and S Lees specialises in cold rerolling a wide range of materials from mild steel to high carbon and alloy steels. Finished products are exported to customers all over the world for stamping, pressing and deep-drawing applications in the automotive and other industries. The company also produces hardened and tempered strip and electron beam welded bimetal strip. High carbon steel and bimetal grades are primarily used to produce saws for cutting applications in wood, plastics and metals. The JB and S Lees production facility at West Bromwich, Birmingham, UK, houses various types of annealing furnaces and a number of cold rolling mills – two of them high-performance mills that are used for the main rolling production. Three years ago Castrol was invited with other lubricant suppliers, to offer a solution to a number of problems JB and S Lees was experiencing with its existing coolant. Martin Jones, R and D manager at J B and S Lees said: “We were experiencing very short coolant life that meant we had to change fluid every 7–10 days, which was costing us a great deal of money. We also encountered serious bacterial problems that had potential health and safety implications”.
