Welcome to Sheffield Platers Incorporated.
Hi, we are Sheffield Plater’s Incorporated and this is our first internal blog post. Since you have made it to our website, we will assume you understand the basics of Metal Finishing, if not, start by clicking on this link: sheffieldplaters.com/abcs-of-plating. Today we specialize in many types of metal finishing (Electroless Nickel, Gold, Black Electroless Nickel, Teflon Nickel, and Cadmium) that cater to the Hermetic, Connector, and Aerospace industries to name a few.
Our goal with these posts is to introduce you to Sheffield Platers Inc., our history, our amazing team, and current core competencies of electroless nickel, gold, SPI Connector Black, PTFE, and Cadmium plating.
Sheffield Platers is a third-generation, family-owned business founded in 1946 by Roy Watkins. Roy’s business focus was the repair and refinishing of trays, holloware, and tea sets. Sheffield Plater’s original facility was in downtown San Diego. Working with his father, Roy, to learn the silversmithing industry, Dale Watkins Sr. helped Sheffield Platers to become one of the preeminent silversmiths in California. Dale Watkins Sr. became the sole proprietor of Sheffield in 1976.
In 1991 after the passing of their father, Dale Watkins Jr. and his brother Mark Watkins became the owners of Sheffield Platers. The goal at the time was to continue the tradition of Silver-Smithing and repair. In 1994 Dale and Mark purchased a new facility in Sorrento Mesa.
With the purchase of the new facility and seeing the direction of the electroplating industry from an environmental standpoint the first goal of the Watkins brothers was ensuring long-term sustainability of the company. In order to achieve this, Dale and Mark made sure that their facility had a closed-loop environmental system. This means that all the waste materials generated by the company would always be hauled away and never make its way into the POTW (Publicly Owned Treatment Works). This approach to treating waste in a responsible manner led to the awarding of the Model Shop Award which has only been presented to three electroplating shops in the state of California.
While continuing to build, improve and strive for sustainability in the facility Mark and Dale started to see a trend of the Hospitality Industry becoming commodity-driven. This shifting landscape gave Mark and Dale the push to analyze the industry they were focused on and start looking at diversification of their offerings.
They say with every challenge comes new opportunity and that is exactly what was discovered. With the decrease in core customers in the hospitality business. Mark and Dale pivoted to learn about engineered finishes. Over the next several years the owners hired a highly experienced team to change the business model and eventually shifted to an engineered coating, electroplating, and metal finishing company. Specifically on Electroless Nickel, Gold, Black Nickel, Cadmium, PTFE, and Hermetic functional coating capabilities.
With the success of the new engineering model, the next focus was on Quality Systems. Sheffield started by becoming certified to ISO 9001 and shortly followed with NADCAP accreditation. The ISO 9001 standard is the world’s most widely recognized quality management system (QMS) certification. With more than 1 million companies certified in over 170 countries, ISO 9001 defines requirements for companies who want to ensure that their products and services consistently meet customer requirements and continually improve their business processes. Nadcap is company-level accreditation based on specific processes used by aerospace suppliers such as chemical processing, coatings, conventional machining, heat treating, non-destructive testing, and welding, among others. Nadcap accreditation is an industry-driven program. This accreditation is intended for organizations doing business in the aerospace industry. These quality accreditations allowed Sheffield to embark on finding new customers in Aerospace and Defense, Space Flight, Medical, Industrial, Specialty Lasers, and the Microwave industries.
This first post was our way of introducing Sheffield Platers to the readers. As we progress with the blog we will introduce specific processes that we feature, the industries we target, and the team that guides, supports, and drives the growth of Sheffield Platers.
Sheffield Platers has been providing cost-effective precision plating for a product’s usability, functionality, and manufacturability for over 68 years. You can trust Sheffield Platers to meet your delivery, quality, and competitive pricing needs with its dependable quality and innovative custom processes. Contact Sheffield for more information about our services or to request a quote.