Bulten UK: Research appendices

Figures in pounds unless marked as euros. Appendices A, C and the opportunity model are euros (original workbook and candidate load). Appendices B, G and I are pounds as built.

Appendices

These appendices keep the research detail behind parts 1 to 4. Three independent commercial assessments are labelled Assessment A, Assessment B and Assessment C. They are not equal corroboration of every input. Direction they share: industrial first, agri fold, wind and rail shorter tenure, aero and medical defer, defence accredit now.

Appendix A. Original growth model (v1 / workbook as issued)

Table of original ACV, tenure, LTV and Y1 to Y3 by sector, labelled in euros as issued. Research was built in pounds and converted at £1 = €1.17 when compared.

Appendix B. Three independent assessments, side by side

Priority call

Buyer count / range

Annual contract value (mature / blend)

Tenure (years)

Time to recurring revenue

Year 1 / Year 2 / Year 3 sector revenue (GBP as built)

Currency honesty: Assessments A, B and C were built in GBP. The original growth model was labelled in EUR. Convert at £1 = €1.17 when comparing. Original model totals remain €0.75m / €12.50m / €36.13m for Y1 / Y2 / Y3.

Appendix C. Candidate figures loaded to the growth model

Table 10 in euros, sourced from Assessment C converted at ×1.17. Full sector ACV, tenure, TTV, flat LTV, grown LTV, Y1 to Y3, and delta versus the original growth model.

Assessment C base totals for audit: Y1-Y3 £0.71m / £4.17m / £11.72m, which convert to €0.83m / €4.88m / €13.72m at FX 1.17. Original growth model Y1-Y3: €0.75m / €12.50m / €36.13m.

Opportunity and growth model

Client-facing opportunity model, in euros to sit beside the workbook. The six-input build is in Appendix D. The line-by-line load is in Appendix C. This section is the seven-sector summary, lifetime value (flat vs grown), and the workbook versus candidate comparison.

The seven sectors

Underlying research was built in sterling and converted at £1 = €1.17.

Lifetime value

Two lifetime value figures are in circulation and they are not the same measure. Flat lifetime value is the annual contract value multiplied by the tenure, with no growth in the account. Grown lifetime value includes the expansion profile in Appendix D. Both are shown so that neither is mistaken for the other. Neither is gross profit, and neither is probability-weighted.

The flat column is the safer number to plan on. The grown column assumes the account expands, which is what the evidence at comparable suppliers shows happening, but it is an assumption about Bulten's own account management rather than an observation about Bulten.

The growth model, line by line

Workbook figures beside the candidate figures. Both columns are euros. Every difference is a euro to euro subtraction.

The industrial annual contract value in the workbook is too low rather than too high. €1.00m against a candidate of €1.18m puts the workbook about 18% below what the intensity rule and the buyer list support. This is the one place in the plan where the correction runs upward on the contract value as well as on the term.

The industrial contract term is the single largest correction available to the plan, and it is also upward. Three years against eight years takes flat lifetime value from €3.00m to €9.47m on the same account.

The year three reduction is concentrated in four lines: agricultural, aerospace, defence and medical. Those four take €30.05m off the plan between them. Wind takes off a further €326k. Industrial and rail put €7.97m back on. The net of those movements is the €22.41m shown. The plan does not need to come down across the board. It comes down in five places and goes up in two.

Appendix D. How a figure is built

Every revenue figure in this pack is unweighted Bulten revenue. No probability weighting has been applied to any number, and no sector total has been adjusted for the likelihood of winning it. A figure of €9.77m means that if the stated number of accounts is opened at the stated contract value, that is the revenue. It does not mean that outcome is more or less likely than any other.

The build has six inputs.

1. C parts intensity. Bulten's own published rule is that fasteners are about 1% of a manufacturer's purchase value. Calibrated against the working relationship already in use in the plan, where a customer near £1bn of turnover yields a contract around £5m a year and a £250m customer yields nearer £1m, that comes to 0.4% to 0.5% of turnover. Aerospace carries a certified hardware premium and runs at 1.0% to 1.5%. Medical devices carry a lower structural fastener content and run at 0.15% to 0.30%.

2. Contract value. Site turnover multiplied by intensity gives the C parts opportunity at that account. Bulten's share of it at entry is one plant or one commodity band: 15% to 25% at an enterprise account, and 50% to 70% at a mid tier account where the whole category can be taken. Enterprise and mid tier contracts are not averaged into a single sector figure without stating the mix, because a first SKU programme at a mid sized manufacturer and a multi site full service contract at a group are different products with an order of magnitude between them. Where a blended figure is shown, the mix behind it is one enterprise account to three mid tier accounts.

3. Qualified buyer count. A qualified buyer is an active UK company, manufacturing on a UK site, assembling in repeat volume, with turnover above the level at which a managed programme pays for itself. This is not the SIC company count and not the size of the research sample. The industrial SIC screen returns 13,025 active companies and 7,146 above micro; the qualified count is 134.

4. Tenure. Taken from observed relationship lengths at comparable suppliers rather than from contract terms, because contract terms are not published in this category and relationships outlast them.

5. Time to first revenue. Qualification plus accreditation plus buyer approval plus contract close plus onboarding. Where a gate has a published clock, that clock is used rather than an estimate.

6. Ramp and expansion profile. A landed account bills about 35% of its mature run rate in its first twelve months while parts transfer in phases and containers are installed, then bills at full rate. Accounts then grow at 15% to 30% a year through years two and three as more part families and more of the C parts range move across, and later as additional sites are added.

One input sits outside the market. The number of accounts opened each year is bound by sales capacity rather than by how many buyers exist. Bulten has no sales organisation today. The year one figures assume two to three senior business development hires and the win schedule that a team of that size can carry against a nine to fifteen month cycle. Eleven industrial accounts held at the end of year three uses fewer than 9% of the qualified pond. The constraint on this plan is hiring.

Planning inputs stated plainly: the 134 industrial buyer count, the eight year tenure, and the year three industrial revenue figure are planning inputs. The buyer count comes from a counted Companies House screen. The tenure is observed at comparable suppliers. The year three industrial figure is capacity-bound by the win schedule (2 / 4 / 5), not by market size.

Appendix E. Named evidence

• Optimas / Jaguar Land Rover: 24 years across two named plants, renewed.
• CDE Global: Supply Technologies already runs about 100 Kanban stations. Displacement, not greenfield.
• Goole (Siemens Mobility): K&K UK Fasteners, nomination to start of production in 6 months, more than 500 parts across 22 mobile shelves.
• MOD Anixter: fastener commodity tender estimated £2.5m over 4 years (about £625k a year).
• JOSCAR: stage one under an hour; stage two commonly six to eight weeks.
• Cyber Essentials Plus: four to eight weeks on a prepared path.
• RISQS: verification published within three working days; audit only where an auditable code is selected.
• AS9120: six to twelve months from Bulten's existing certification base; customer approvals follow the certificate.

Appendix F. What this pack drops

• SRAM, automotive and acquisition paths sit outside the seven-sector UK total and are not loaded here.
• Horizon 3 is parked.
• The high case is not loaded without the sales organisation and packaged mid-market offer that case assumes.

Appendix G. Named accounts (original research pack)

Account-level tables from the original UK research pack: operating entity, site, spend and revenue ranges, incumbents, barriers, grades and source links. Probability-weighted gross-profit LTV has been removed so this appendix matches the rest of the pack (unweighted revenue only). A 15 September 2026 Companies House / official-site verification register exists; rows note where a filing packet is on file. Unverified plants do not carry revenue estimates.

That register post-dates the original table. It contains filing-history packets and official-site URLs (including Spirax, Edwards, Renishaw, Liebherr, Komatsu, Terex, Ishida, Perkins, JCB, Cummins and others). Presence of a packet confirms the legal entity and accounts, not a UK plant VMI incumbent.

Appendix H. Method, definitions and source register

Appendix I. Full sector evidence (counted assessment)

Sector-by-sector working behind Assessment C: buyer screens, contract construction, tenure, time to revenue, growth, Year 1 to 3, and the source register. This is the counted Companies House assessment, not a second client-facing summary.

How each figure is built

1. Industrial equipment and machinery

The one sector where every answer is favourable at once. It has the most qualified buyers, the only absent accreditation gate, the shortest path to a first invoice, the longest observed tenure, and the only body of page-verified UK evidence showing buyers already paying somebody else to do exactly what Bulten does for JLR.

How many suitable customers

The SIC census returns 13,025 active UK companies and 7,146 above micro. Neither is a buyer count. Screened to UK manufacturing sites with repeat-volume assembly and a spend base that carries a programme:

• 14 enterprise accounts at £250m+ UK turnover. Twelve are confirmed in the filed set: JCB (£4.88bn), Rolls-Royce (£4.49bn), Cummins (£2.84bn), Spirax (£1.68bn), Caterpillar UK (£1.33bn), Perkins Engines (£1.27bn), Terex GB (£557m), JCB Compact Products (£537m), plus Weir, IMI, Rotork, Renishaw, Komatsu UK, Liebherr GB and Edwards across the £250m–£1bn band.
• c.120 mid-tier accounts at £50m–£250m. 34 are confirmed with filed turnover in the ranked market list; the band is deeper than the sample. Ishida Europe (£167m, Birmingham) is the type case.
• Below £50m the count runs to roughly 7,000 and the service economics stop working without the packaged offer.

Contract size

The growth model uses €1m as the Year-1 industrial ACV. Built independently from the census and the intensity rule, this lands at €1.18m. The ACV in the model is sound.

Tenure and lifetime value

Not three years. Optimas has held Jaguar Land Rover for 24 years and renewed it across two named plants; REYHER has held Dräger since the early 1990s. Once bins are on a line and a supplier's staff are in the building, the account does not turn over on a procurement cycle. Base tenure 8 years, low 5, high 12. With expansion, lifetime value is £10.1m on a blended account: against the model's €3m. The model's three-year industrial contract life is the single most valuable correction available to it, and it corrects upward.

Time to first revenue

No sector accreditation gate. ISO 9001 is the common baseline and Bulten Ltd, Scunthorpe already appears on Bureau Veritas certificate SE010265-1. Qualification is short and first pilots are achievable within two quarters. Base 9 months from a qualified conversation to first invoice; low 6, high 12. Full run-rate at roughly 18 months.

How the account grows

Entry is one line, one bin wall, one part family. Growth is documented in the incumbents' own material: Supply Technologies runs more than 800 components across 100 Kanban stations at CDE Global and an average of 15 million components a month for Swift; Würth runs roughly 4,500 active bins across 45 storage locations at Kärcher and 6,000 containers at 170 locations at Volvo CE's ABG. Staytite entered Teekay Couplings on around thirty parts. The growth path is thirty parts to eight hundred, then one site to several. Base expansion 25% a year on a landed account.

Year 1 to Year 3

Eleven accounts by the end of Year 3 uses fewer than 9% of the qualified pond. The constraint is hiring, not market.

2. Defence and security

The gate is far cheaper and faster than the plan assumes; the demand shape is far less proven. These two errors run in opposite directions and largely cancel, but they need fixing separately.

How many suitable customers

1,625 companies clear the census screen; 271 are large or mid-sized. The buyer count that matters is smaller: 9 primes at £1bn+: BAE Systems (£2.16bn at PLC level, £1.70bn at Surface Ships), Leonardo UK (£2.76bn), Babcock, Rolls-Royce Defence, QinetiQ, MBDA UK, Thales UK, Lockheed Martin UK, AWE: and 11 at £250m–£1bn including Raytheon UK, General Dynamics UK, RBSL, Chemring, Ultra, Senior and Martin-Baker. 20 qualified accounts. A separate, smaller route exists through MOD logistics commodity tendering.

Contract size

Two shapes, and they must not be averaged.

• Prime programme work. £0.9m low, £2.2m base, £4.5m high per site. Certified hardware carries a two-to-five-times premium over commodity, which is why sector C-parts spend is estimated at £100–200m a year on a smaller manufactured base than industrial equipment.
• Tendered MOD commodity. The only published fastener contract value in the entire evidence base: Leidos Supply Limited awarded The Supply of Fasteners to Anixter OEM Solutions on 26 August 2024 at an estimated £2.5m across four years: £625k a year, three tenders received. This is a real, winnable, recompeted contract and it is small.

The growth model's €5m ACV is the prime-programme high case, applied as the default. Base it at €2.6m.

Tenure and lifetime value

Platform-length. Base 7 years, lifetime £13.0m. The tendered route is fixed at four years and recompeted, so it should be modelled separately at £2.5m of lifetime value, not blended in.

Time to first revenue

This is where the plan is most wrong, and it is wrong in Bulten's favour. The accreditation clock is weeks:

• JOSCAR Stage 1: free, typically under 60 minutes.
• JOSCAR Stage 2: suppliers are commonly given up to 8 weeks to complete; Saab's own brochure states typically up to six weeks to attain Stage 2.
• Cyber Essentials Plus: commonly 4–8 weeks on a prepared path, basic Cyber Essentials first.

So the entry ticket is roughly three to four months and low cost, not the multi-year gate the plan implies by starting defence revenue in FY29 alongside aerospace. What is slow is not the accreditation but the buying behaviour: no page-verified UK case yet shows a defence prime buying C-parts as a managed Kanban service. Bufab holds a framework with Babcock International covering fasteners and associated C-parts with on-site digital solutions: the closest analogue, and it is a framework announcement rather than an observed plant programme. Base 24 months to first prime revenue; 9–15 months on the tendered commodity route.

How the account grows

Approval at one prime opens the rest of that prime's UK sites, then the platform's tier-one supply chain, which inherits the prime's approved-vendor list. Security clearance for on-site staff is the practical gate on expansion, not commercial appetite. Base expansion 30% a year: the highest of any sector, because primes are multi-site and the approval transfers.

Year 1 to Year 3

Year 1 £0.00m. Year 2 £0.00m base (£1.02m high, if the tendered route lands). Year 3 £0.50m base, £4.94m high. The action in Years 1–2 is accreditation and validation, not revenue.

3. Wind and energy

Right size, wrong contract length, and the entry route is not the one the plan implies.

How many suitable customers

The census is unusable here: the SIC set returns 98,186 companies because it has to include electricity generation, utility construction and engineering design to catch wind at all, and the ranked list it produces is dominated by service and infrastructure firms that assemble nothing. The real buyer count is the UK manufacturing and fabrication footprint: 6 groups at £1bn+ (Siemens Gamesa Hull, Vestas Isle of Wight, SeAH Teesside, GE Vernova, plus the Humber operations hubs) and 9 at £250m–£1bn including JDR Cables and Smulders. 15 qualified sites, against an estimated £25–60m of annual sector C-parts spend.

Contract size

Per site, not per group: £0.8m low, £1.6m base, £3.0m high at an OEM plant; £0.30–£1.40m at a fabricator. Blended £1.06m. This is close to the model's €1m and the model is right on this line. Structural bolting intensity runs 1.5–2.5% of fabrication value, which is higher than industrial equipment: but most of it is already contracted at European group level to product specialists, so it is not the addressable share.

Tenure and lifetime value

Not fifteen years. Nothing in the evidence supports a fifteen-year contract life; the figure appears to have been taken from turbine design life rather than from a supply agreement. Plant programmes re-set with product cycles and group sourcing rounds. Base 5 years, low 3, high 8. Lifetime value £6.4m against the model's €15m. This is the second-largest overstatement in the model after agriculture, and it is entirely in the term.

Time to first revenue

No single gatekeeper scheme and no published lead time. Qualification is buyer-specific: Vestas runs a supplier enquiry form that lists C-parts and fasteners as a category and asks for ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 status, manufacturing footprint, financial information and offshore production capacity. That is a supplier screen, not an open tender. Base 15 months, low 12, high 18.

How the account grows

Entry is the services wrap around the product incumbent: kits, consolidation, managed inventory, operations consumables: not a head-on attack on structural bolting. The pattern is visible elsewhere: Würth's ENERCON service programme runs roughly 8,000 bins across more than 100 service stations, reordered by barcode app. That is fleet-maintenance storage, and it is a large book. Grimsby, on Bulten's doorstep, hosts the world's largest offshore operations centre. Base expansion 20% a year.

Year 1 to Year 3

Year 1 £0.00m. Year 2 £0.37m on one site landed. Year 3 £1.43m on two. High case £3.47m by Year 3.

4. Rail (rolling stock)

A small pond with a live, dated, page-verified analogue. Worth a funded trial and nothing more.

How many suitable customers

The census returns 6,562 companies and the ranked list is contaminated: it pulls in highways maintenance, traffic systems and power services contractors under the same SIC codes as rolling-stock manufacture. Screened to UK rolling-stock build and overhaul: 4 at scale: Siemens Mobility Goole, Hitachi Rail Newton Aycliffe (£717m), Alstom Derby (£555m UK entity), Wabtec UK (£310m): and 2 more at CAF Newport and the overhaul specialists. 6 qualified buyers against an estimated £15–30m of annual sector spend. One of the six is already taken.

Contract size

£0.5m low, £1.1m base, £2.2m high at a major; £0.45m base at an overhaul site. Blended £0.84m, which lands almost exactly on the model's €1m. Rolling stock carries a smaller C-parts share of bill-of-materials value than machinery, but a higher certificate burden: drawing conformity and EN 10204 3.1 certificates where specified.

Tenure and lifetime value

Not ten years. Rolling-stock procurement is re-tendered per build programme, so contract life follows the programme, not the customer. Base 5 years, low 3, high 7. Lifetime value £5.0m against the model's €10m.

Time to first revenue

RISQS is the documented entry route and it is cheap. Questionnaire completion runs hours to a few days, and submitted requirements are verified and published within three working days where no further information is needed. If an auditable RICCL code is selected, an audit is required: audits are typically raised around 20 weeks in advance with Stage 1 evidence due at least 8 weeks before Stage 2, and third-party guidance cites audit lead times up to three months. So the gate is three to six months depending on scope.

The commercial clock is better evidenced than in any other sector: K&K UK Fasteners went from nomination to start of production in six months at Siemens Mobility's Goole Rail Village, running labelLOG QR scanning across more than 500 parts and 22 mobile shelves. Base 15 months from standing start to first invoice, low 12, high 18.

How the account grows

Build programme, then depot and overhaul, then the next programme. The Goole case shows the shape: more than 500 parts on a single platform. Base expansion 20% a year. The ceiling is low because there are six buyers.

Year 1 to Year 3

Year 1 £0.00m. Year 2 £0.29m. Year 3 £1.13m. That is marginally ahead of the model's €0.88m over the same period. Rail is the one sector where the model is, if anything, slightly conservative on revenue: and simultaneously twice as optimistic as it should be on contract life.

5. Agricultural machinery

The €60m is real. It is not agricultural machinery.

How many suitable customers

SIC 2830 returns 461 active UK companies, 259 above micro and 48 large or mid-sized. The ranked list by filed turnover is topped by Ifor Williams Trailers at £84m, followed by Ploeger (£26m), Tong Engineering (£22m), Bailey Trailers (£21m), Fullwood (£20m), Teagle (£18m) and Bernhard & Co (£16m). There is no UK agricultural machinery manufacturer in the £250m–£1bn band at all, and only five exceed £50m.

JCB and CNH are the two £1bn+ names always cited for this sector. Both sit in the industrial-equipment census under general and special-purpose machinery codes, and JCB's agricultural lines are built in the same plants as its construction machines, with C-parts spend pooled at plant level. They are one account each, and they are industrial-equipment accounts.

Qualified buyers unique to agricultural machinery, after removing dealers and distributors from the list: 8, none above £110m turnover.

Contract size

£60k low, £180k base, £350k high. Ifor Williams at £103m × 0.5% × 60% share = £309k, the top of the realistic range. The growth model carries €10m as the Year-1 agricultural ACV: ten times the industrial ACV, in a sector whose entire annual C-parts spend is estimated at £30–70m and whose largest unique buyer is a trailer maker. At €60m a year by FY31 the line requires 85–200% of the whole sector's annual spend.

Tenure, time to revenue, and growth

Tenure base 6 years, lifetime £1.2m. No sector accreditation gate; base 10 months to first revenue, the second-fastest after industrial. Expansion 15% a year: these are single-site businesses with limited headroom. The long tail below £50m buys transactionally and is the segment most winnable with a packaged offer, but each account is worth tens of thousands, not millions.

Year 1 to Year 3

Year 1 £0.00m. Year 2 £0.06m. Year 3 £0.31m. Against the model's €30m over the same three years.

6. Aerospace and aviation

The largest C-parts spend of any UK sector, and unreachable organically inside three years.

How many suitable customers

10 at £1bn+: Airbus Broughton, Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems, GKN Aerospace, Leonardo Yeovil, Safran, Thales, Parker Meggitt: and 12 at £250m–£1bn including Martin-Baker, Marshall, Moog UK, Gardner and Senior. 22 qualified accounts, against 505 registered manufacturers of which only 35 exceed £50m. Named UK sites already scoped as white space include Safran Actuation Wolverhampton (£534m), Parker Meggitt Ansty (£444m) and Moog Wolverhampton (£165m).

Contract size

Aerospace fastener intensity runs 1.0–1.5% of sector turnover against 0.4–0.5% elsewhere, because certified precision hardware carries its own price. Sector spend is estimated at £300–500m a year: the largest of any market examined. Per account: £0.8m low, £2.0m base, £4.0m high at a tier-one; the primes are held on multi-year integrated supply agreements. Blended £1.40m. The model's €5m ACV is the automotive figure copied across; no aerospace reference exists behind it.

Tenure and lifetime value

The longest of any sector once won. Base 9 years, lifetime £15.8m. Programme life and approval cost both work against churn.

Time to first revenue

Two gates in series. AS9120 for distribution is reachable in roughly 6 to 12 months from Bulten's existing certification base; implementation guides cite 4–6 months for smaller organisations, 6–9 for mid-sized and 9–12+ for complex multi-site, with the quality system typically operated for at least three months before the certification audit. Then customer approvals, which are the long pole and are not on Bulten's clock. Nothing public confirms Bulten Ltd holds AS9120 or AS9100 today. Base 30 months, low 24, high 36.

How the account grows, and Year 1 to Year 3

Approval at one OEM is portable to that OEM's other sites, which is why Incora's renewed agreement with GKN Aerospace covers integrated supply including hardware and chemical management across multiple GKN facilities globally. Base expansion 25%. Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3 are all £0.00m on an organic path. The model carries €5m in FY29.

7. Medical devices

Slow, small on fasteners specifically, and a discovery question before it is a market.

How many suitable customers

Roughly 2,085 registered manufacturers, of which only about 35 exceed £50m. 7 at £1bn+ with real UK plants: Smith+Nephew Hull (£6.16bn), Siemens Healthineers Eynsham, ConvaTec Deeside, Johnson & Johnson DePuy Leeds, BD Plymouth, Terumo Glasgow: and 7 more at £250m–£1bn including Elekta (£304m) and Bespak. 14 qualified accounts, and only the equipment makers are genuinely relevant.

Contract size

Devices use fewer structural fasteners and more precision turned parts and consumables, so intensity is 0.15–0.30% of turnover, not 0.5%. Per account £0.30m low, £0.70m base, £1.40m high at an equipment maker; £0.25m base below that. Blended £0.41m. Sector spend £40–90m a year. The model's €1m ACV is roughly twice what the category supports.

Tenure, time to revenue, growth

Tenure base 8 years: qualification cost makes these accounts sticky once won; REYHER has held Dräger as a Kanban customer since the early 1990s. Lifetime value £3.9m. Time to first revenue 30 months: no universal ISO 13485 mandate on fastener distributors was established, but buyer-specific qualification and regulatory approval are explicitly slow, and compliance-heavy direct contracting is the norm. Expansion 20%.

Year 1 to Year 3

£0.00m in all three years. The model carries €1m in FY29. Medical is a develop-later posture, and the only page-verified UK case is emergency logistics under the ventilator programme, not a steady-state managed inventory aisle.

Which sectors to prioritise, and why

The single change worth making to the plan

The growth model allocates its largest new-sector bet, €130m cumulative and a €425m pipeline requirement, to agricultural machinery: eight unique buyers and £30–70m of annual sector spend. It allocates its smallest, €19.5m cumulative, to industrial equipment: 134 qualified buyers, £330–440m of annual spend, no gate and the fastest clock. Those two lines are the wrong way round, and swapping them makes the plan more achievable and larger at the same time.

What would move these numbers

Five inputs sit inside Bulten and would replace the modelled assumptions with measured ones. Each is a data request, not a research task.

Source register

Every figure in this document traces to one of the following. Grade A is a filing, a regulator or scheme record, or a buyer- or supplier-owned page with a direct statement. Grade B is a single company statement. Grade C is a transparent calculation with its inputs shown above.

Appendix J. What was researched

A list of the work actually run. Not a claim of completeness. Retrieval window for this pack: 11 to 15 September 2026, on top of the August 2026 synthesis.

Census and SIC

• Companies House free company snapshot, 1 September 2026: 5,689,367 records. SIC 2007 applied to all four SIC fields. Active companies only.
• Seven sector taxonomies (four-digit SIC classes). Known over-inclusion: wind also pulls generation, utility construction and design; rail also pulls highways and traffic contractors. Buyer counts in the client pack are screened lists, not those raw rankings.
• Gross active / addressable (ex-micro) from the census: Industrial 13,025 / 7,146; Agricultural 461 / 259; Wind 98,186 / 33,254; Rail 6,562 / 2,292; Aerospace 3,430 / 850; Defence 3,256 / 1,625; Medical 4,077 / 1,622. All seven: 128,997 active / 47,048 addressable.
• Companies House accounts bulk: 24 monthly archives (Sep 2024 to Aug 2026). 3,958 filings fetched for 2,236 census companies. iXBRL parsed for turnover, cost of sales, profit, stock, debtors, employees, net assets.
• Local classification of filed activity to separate manufacturers from services, wholesale and holding companies sharing the same SIC.
• Companies House API for named-account legal entities and registered offices (source S14).

Cases (supplier / buyer)

• Optimas at JCB (award 2013) and at Cummins UK (Outstanding Supplier 2020); Optimas inside JCB Rocester line replenishment; Optimas at Jaguar Land Rover (24-year relationship, two plants).
• Supply Technologies at CDE Global (800+ components, 100 Kanban stations) and at Swift Group (~15 million components a month).
• Fabory Logic at RNA Automation, Birmingham.
• Staytite Kanban at Teekay Couplings (~30 parts, from 2014).
• K&K UK Fasteners at Siemens Mobility Goole (500+ parts, 22 shelves, nomination to start of production in six months).
• Optimas historical Hitachi Newton Aycliffe supply-chain case (~2017).
• Bufab framework with Babcock International (fasteners and C-parts plus on-site digital), Oct 2025.
• Incora renewed agreement with GKN Aerospace (integrated supply including hardware).
• Würth Industrie Service: ENERCON Service (~8,000 bins, 100+ stations); also Kärcher, Volvo CE ABG, AGCO Fendt, Sears Manufacturing as expansion analogues.
• REYHER at Dräger (from early 1990s) as tenure analogue.
• Bufab marketing names: CNH, Sampo Rosenlew, Väderstad (naming only, service not described).
• Vestas / Boltun fastener manufacture (Taiwan, 2020): not a UK plant programme.
• Nord-Lock at Alstom (international; UK plant not established).
• Essentra / Penlon (medical emergency logistics).
• Clarendon listed approvals at BAE Systems and Airbus Defence and Space (approvals, not orders).

Tenders and public notices

• Find a Tender / Contracts Finder: Leidos Supply, The Supply of Fasteners, LSL/GS/0098, awarded 26 August 2024 to Anixter OEM Solutions, estimated £2.5m over four years, three tenders received. Only published UK fastener contract value found.
• Sector scan of Find a Tender and Contracts Finder for defence, rail and other public-adjacent fastener/C-parts awards.

Accreditation and scheme pages

• JOSCAR: Stage 1 (free, typically under 60 minutes) and Stage 2 (commonly up to six to eight weeks; Saab brochure).
• Cyber Essentials / Cyber Essentials Plus (commonly 4 to 8 weeks on a prepared path).
• RISQS supplier FAQs and two-stage audit FAQs (verification in three working days where no further information is needed; audit lead times up to about three months where required).
• AS9120 / AS9100 timing from Bulten's existing certification base (6 to 12 months to distribution certificate; customer approvals follow).
• Bureau Veritas ISO 9001 certificate SE010265-1 for Bulten; group IATF 16949 certificates 0530523 and 0507476. Public record does not confirm JOSCAR, Cyber Essentials Plus, AS9120 or AS9100 in Bulten Ltd's own name.
• Vestas supplier enquiry form (C-parts and fasteners as a category; ISO 9001 / 14001, footprint, financials, offshore capacity).

Job adverts and hiring signals

• Competitor and buyer job adverts scraped as a propensity signal (procurement, SQE, VMI, Kanban, C-parts, line-side replenishment) via Serper / Firecrawl / Apify runs in the September collection jobs. Used as supporting evidence of live buying behaviour, not as contract proof.

Pages and websites (hubs and sector packs)

• August synthesis: Bulten Market Opportunity and Competitive Position (Aug 2026); Bulten Ltd 2030 Strategy (June 2026 board); commercial Word note.
• Bulten Q4 and full-year report 2025 (group GM 18.4%; UK sales SEK 1,423m / 1,786m).
• Earlier research hubs and sector one-pagers lived on (retired host) and are not part of this Vercel publish. Method and evidence for this pack are in the appendices above.
• Competitor sites and case pages as listed above (Optimas, Supply Technologies, Fabory, Staytite, Bufab, Würth, Incora, K&K, Clarendon).
• Buyer sites and filings: JCB, Cummins, Perkins, Caterpillar UK, Spirax, Terex, Rotork, Renishaw, Komatsu UK, Liebherr GB, Edwards, Weir, IMI, Hitachi Rail, Alstom Derby, Siemens Mobility Goole, CAF Newport, Vestas, Siemens Gamesa Hull, SeAH Teesside, and defence primes (BAE, Leonardo, Babcock, Thales, MBDA, and others on the screened list).
• Trade press: fastenerandfixing.com; Renews (Hull / Hornsea 3); New Civil Engineer (SeAH / Hornsea 3 monopile cancellation, Feb 2026); Alstom Derby Elizabeth line production (Oct 2025).

Internal models and registers used

• YoY Growth Model v3 workbook (8 August 2026) as the original plan column.
• Named-account JSON/CSV registers (industrial, agricultural, wind, rail, aerospace, defence, medical).
• Source register S1 to S15 plus the counted-assessment source table in Appendix I.
• Three independent commercial assessments (A plant-tiered, B planning scenarios, C counted base) compared in Appendix B.

Appendix K. Research briefs (simple)

What was asked, in plain language. The full brief files sit in the project folder. This is the instruction, not the result.

The decision the work was for

The board has to choose which new UK sectors to enter, in what order, and with what commercial investment. The test is profit and return on capital, not revenue for its own sake. The original growth model put numbers on seven new sectors in a workshop. This work was commissioned to replace finger-in-the-air sector lines with evidenced planning inputs.

Out of scope for the seven-sector UK story: automotive (including Jaguar Land Rover), SRAM, and Horizon 3 (new markets beyond fasteners).

Brief v1 (11 September 2026)

For each of the seven sectors, establish:

1. Who already sells fasteners and C-parts with a service wrap in the UK (named competitors, filed margin, stock days, accreditations).
2. Which end-user manufacturers those competitors serve, plus the UK manufacturer list by turnover band.
3. What an account is worth (C-parts spend, annual contract value, tenure, lifetime value).
4. How long it takes (sales cycle, procurement route, accreditation clock).
5. How to enter (displace, wrap around an incumbent, accredit, or acquire), with named targets where the incumbent is known.
6. What is obtainable in the plan period, with a confidence grade.

Method named in the brief: Companies House API; Find a Tender and Contracts Finder; search and crawl of competitor sites, case studies and job adverts; evidence row for every hit (source, date, grade).

Census brief (14 September 2026)

Replace a ten-company sample with a census. Read the Companies House snapshot and accounts bulk. Define each sector by SIC. Separate manufacturers from SIC noise. Report firmographics and measured economics from filings, not from the growth model.

Six-sector commercial spec (14 September 2026)

For agricultural, wind, rail, aerospace, defence and medical: SIC taxonomy and exclusions; gross TAM vs addressable vs screened SAM; ranked top-100 by turnover with company number, site, accounts, website; then the same commercial questions as brief v1 at account level where evidence exists.

Client-pack write brief (15 September 2026)

Write an old-school report for the Group CEO and operational board: five-page executive summary, opportunity and growth model, sector recommendations, and why the numbers changed. Unweighted Bulten revenue. No probability weighting. Candidate figures in euros next to the original workbook. First twelve months as market-fit validation. Sales and marketing under 1.5% of revenue now, working target 3 to 4%; net EBITDA about 14% to leave about 10% after reinvestment.

Appendix L. What could be researched next (account level)

The pack is still sector-and-planning-input, not a named win schedule. The next research should be one row per buying site. Suggested order follows the sector calls.

Industrial (do first)

• Publish the ranked list behind the 134 qualified buyers (14 enterprise / ~120 mid). Legal entity, company number, UK plant, filed turnover, SIC, website.
• Plant identification where the pack still says "site-select required" (Weir, IMI, and any group PLC used as a proxy for a UK factory).
• Incumbent at the plant, not the group logo: who owns the bins, how many stations, whether staff sit on site. Confirm Optimas at JCB and Cummins; do not list CDE as greenfield (Supply Technologies already in).
• JCB: one commercial conversation to settle whether agricultural lines are a separate wallet or pooled with construction at Rocester / Cheadle / Uttoxeter.
• Perkins / Caterpillar Peterborough and Cummins Darlington: blank vs entrenched incumbent, second-source path.
• Bulten internal: C-parts share of purchase value on a live industrial-style account; win rate and cycle by account tier; time from signature to full run rate; stock and engineering capacity.
• Win schedule at account names for years 1 to 3 (the 2 / 4 / 5 industrial wins are capacity, not named logos).

Defence

• Does Bulten Ltd already hold JOSCAR Stage 2, Cyber Essentials Plus, or any prime approval in its own name? Public record does not say. That is an internal check, not more web research.
• If not, run Stage 1 this quarter and time Stage 2.
• Named prime and tier-one map: BAE, Babcock, Leonardo, Thales, MBDA, RBSL, and which UK sites actually buy C-parts as a managed service. Bufab/Babcock is a framework announcement, not a plant programme.
• MOD commodity route vs prime programme route kept as two rows, not averaged.

Wind and rail (trial accounts)

• Wind: one site visit or supplier-form exercise at Vestas, Siemens Gamesa Hull, or the Grimsby O&M cluster to test the services-wrap thesis. No UK OEM VMI case is page-verified yet.
• Rail: remaining five rolling-stock plants after Goole analogue (Alstom Derby, Hitachi Newton Aycliffe, CAF Newport, Wabtec, overhaul). Incumbent, RISQS status, next build programme date.

Agricultural residual

• Confirm the unique UK list of eight after JCB and CNH move to industrial. Latest filed turnover for the trailer-manufacturer line (£84m vs ~£103m discrepancy to resolve against accounts).
• No UK plant VMI case at a named agri OEM. One conversation at CNH Basildon if that account is pursued as industrial, not as a sector average.

Aerospace and medical (hold, research only if a named path appears)

• Aerospace: AS9120 / AS9100 status of Bulten Ltd; named programme and approval path before any Year 1 to 3 revenue is booked. Acquisition screen only if the plan keeps an aerospace line.
• Medical: named equipment or assembly plants with fastener-using assemblies (not distributors). ISO 13485 and change-control clock against a real RFQ, not a sector average.

What not to do next

• Do not re-run the SIC census for its own sake. The denominator exists. The gap is plant-level incumbents and a named win list.
• Do not add Horizon 3 or SRAM into this seven-sector appendix.
• Do not treat job-ad hits or logo pages as contracts.