Fords of Winsford more than double capacity thanks to STL booth

A family-owned car supermarket has seen its bodyshop capacity double in size thanks to bespoke booths installed by STL Spraybooth.

Bosses at Fords of Winsford, the largest car supermarket in the North, has said they are delighted with the increase in business in the year it celebrates its 60^thanniversary.

Phil Travis, group bodyshop manager, said:

“Our former bodyshop could only cope with about 45 jobs a week. It was old fashioned, very limited and not very flexible for the work we were doing – prep and reinstatement work for the cars we are selling. As a company, we had grown and grown and now have 2,000 cars on site. We needed a bodyshop to match this.”

Due to the growing volume of business, Fords had been using local bodyshops more and more before deciding to bring everything in-house. Phil said:

“The management made the decision to develop our own bodyshop proposition and we sourced a building that we thought could be converted into a bodyshop. I have known Kevin Dillion and STL for a long time so I took the plans to him to see if we could create a bespoke design that would maximise the 10,000sqft rectangle space.”

STL created a bodyshop that included a Cyclone downdraft spraybooth, allowing two cars to be sprayed at the same time, and a paint shop down one wall. Phil added:

“We can now take up to 100 cars a week so we are delighted with the increased capacity and the flexibility it gives us. It has already shaved off five weeks of backlog. We are pleased with the new bodyshop and the team at STL who worked closely with us to design exactly what we needed.”

Kevin Dillion, sales director at STL, said:

“Our work with Fords of Winford is a great example of our designers and installers taking any space and maximising it to the full benefit of our customers. We are delighted to hear how our bespoke booths have helped further improve capacity at such a leading car supermarket.”