Versatility & knowledge proves a winner for YLF

YORKSHIRE’S premier laser cutting and fabrication firm’s versatility and know-how has won over the manufacturers of the first ‘social kitchen appliance’.

Kaelo – the company behind the revolutionary integrated wine cooler of the same name – first got in touch with Normanton-based Yorkshire Laser and Fabrication (YLF) for their laser cutting capabilities. But when faced with quality issues and the desire to develop the product still further, they turned to them again.

On the market since 2016, the Kaelo puts the fun into functional rooms like kitchens, providing a technological advance on the traditional ice bucket method of cooling wine. Providing perfectly chilled wine to its very last drop, without the melted mess of dripping water, the Kaelo turns wherever it is fitted into a social environment and so has been dubbed a ‘social appliance’.

Offering innovation of space, the Kaelo is proving a big hit with homeowners as well as with the commercial restaurant and hotel, marine and aviation sectors.

“We were impressed with YLF’s quality of work and customer service when they first began laser cutting and then fabricating parts for us so when we had some design improvements that were proving too difficult for our existing supplier we asked them to take a look,” explained Kaelo’s founder Kevin Jabou.

The problem Kaelo was experiencing related to welding, alignment and burn through. Calling upon nearly 30 years of experience, YLF developed a fixture to hold the aluminium in an exact position to ensure a consistent weld without the burn through which had caused so many parts to be instantly rejected.

“YLF assured us they could sort the problem and sent back samples that were perfect. We were really impressed and have just taken delivery from them of our largest batch of fabricated parts for assembly,” said Kevin.

With demand for the Kaelo growing by the day – business has quadrupled in the last year – Kevin looks forward to continuing his company’s working relationship with YLF.

“YLF’s customer service and the quality of their work is especially good. We are absolutely going to continue working together,” he said.

Matt Orford, MD of YLF, said his team was pleased to get to grips with Kaelo’s challenge and come up with a solution.

“We spent quite a considerable amount of time getting to the bottom of the manufacturing challenges Kaelo wanted to solve but we’ve many years of experience of this type of issue so once we had the correct tooling in place were able to produce the parts that were needed to the required high standard,” he explained.

“The Kaelo is an inspired product. We have now produced about 2,000 units for them and are delighted to be associated with it.”