No time to source parts?
The Make UK/BDO Manufacturing Outlook, Q3 2025 counts 46,000 unfilled vacancies in UK manufacturing, costing an estimated four billion pounds of output a year. In a small firm the gap is not a vacancy; it is the owner doing the buying after hours. This page is for that owner.
Procurement people have names for this model: turnkey contract manufacturer, master subcontractor, managed supply. TrueNorth Engineering in Manchester provides it for firms with no purchasing function, from quantity one.
What a purchasing department actually costs
The CIPS/Hays Procurement & Supply Salary Guide 2025 puts the average UK procurement and supply salary at £54,576 a year. Add employer on-costs, the software, and the years it takes one buyer to build a network of shops they trust. For a firm buying a few dozen part numbers a year, that hire never makes sense, so the job lands on someone whose time was meant for engineering or for customers.
You pay for sourcing one way or the other. With TrueNorth it is inside one firm price for the delivered, inspected part, and you can compare that price with any other quote you get. There is no retainer and no minimum. When you have nothing to buy, you pay nothing.
How you get a fair price without volume
A shop prices a one-off enquiry from an unknown buyer at the bottom of its pile, and quotes accordingly. TrueNorth buys across its whole network, so your small order arrives at the shop as part of an ongoing relationship. We always have capacity available, and we can absorb a ramp-up when your order book jumps.
The bigger lever is the DFM review that starts every quote. An engineer reads your drawing before it is priced and tells you what to change: a tolerance that costs money without buying you anything, a feature that needs a second setup, a material that is on eight weeks' lead time when its neighbour is in stock. Most of the avoidable cost in a small batch is removed there, not in negotiation.
What if you only have a sample and no drawing?
Send the sample. Worn, broken or obsolete is fine. TrueNorth measures it, produces the manufacturing drawing and model, and makes the part from that. It is one of the most common jobs we do for small firms, because the machine the part came off is often older than the company. The full process is in our guide to making a part from a sample with no drawing, and there is a companion guide on obsolete part remanufacture.
Who chases the shop if it is late?
TrueNorth does, and you hear about it from us first. Every order runs on a milestone timeline in the Digital Factory: confirmed, material in, machining, finishing, inspection, despatched, each stamped when it happens. If a date is at risk you receive a written update with the reason and a firm new date, before the promised date passes. Every part is inspected before it ships. If it ships wrong, it is remade at no charge, and that guarantee is printed on the quote.
We do not publish an on-time percentage, because we will not put a number on this site that we cannot defend line by line. We publish the process instead, and invite you to test it on your first order.
What buyers say
“We reordered the same part 13 months later and paid exactly the same price. No renegotiation, no inflation surprises. That's genuinely unusual.”
“We shipped a tool that needed modifying — Jan-Marc had it done and back to us without a PO raised. That level of trust is rare in a supplier.”
When we are the wrong choice
If you have a buyer, a network of shops you trust and the volume to matter to them, go direct and keep the difference. If your part is clean CAD, single process and you need it in three days, an instant-quote platform will beat us on speed. We wrote a guide on when a sourcing partner beats going direct that says exactly where each route wins. Where TrueNorth earns its price is multi-process parts, small quantities, parts with no drawing, repeat batches that must match the first, and buying teams of one.
Send it over: a drawing, a sketch, or a photo of the part.
You will have a DFM review and a firm price within 48 hours, from one named person. A mutual NDA is signed before anyone reads the drawing.
Small-firm sourcing: the questions owners ask
Yes. That is the service. Send a drawing, a sketch or a photo of the part and TrueNorth does the rest: DFM review within 48 hours, sourcing from a vetted UK-first network, the finishing and inspection steps, certificates, packaging and delivery. You deal with one named person and receive one finished, inspected part at one firm price.
Yes. TrueNorth buys across its whole network, so a small order from you arrives at a shop as part of a relationship rather than a one-off enquiry at the bottom of the pile. Every quote also starts with a DFM review, which is where most avoidable cost is removed before the part is priced. There is no minimum order; TrueNorth quotes from quantity one.
You pay for sourcing one way or the other. Done yourself it costs hours: finding shops, chasing quotes, placing the finishing steps, chasing dates and checking parts. The CIPS/Hays Salary Guide 2025 puts the average UK procurement salary at £54,576 before on-costs. With TrueNorth it is inside one firm price for the delivered, inspected part, which you can compare against any other quote.
TrueNorth does, and you hear about it from TrueNorth before the date, not after. Every order is tracked stage by stage in the Digital Factory, and if a date is at risk you receive a written update with the reason and a firm new date. If a part ships non-conforming it is remade at no charge.
Send the sample. TrueNorth measures it, produces a manufacturing drawing and model, and makes the part from that. It is a routine job for TrueNorth and it is how a lot of obsolete and legacy parts come back into supply. There is a full guide on making a part from a sample with no drawing.
No. TrueNorth quotes from quantity one, and the same part can be reordered later at a locked price. Small quantities are the norm for the businesses this service was built for.
TrueNorth Engineering is working towards ISO 9001. The shops that make your parts are ISO 9001 certified, every order is inspected before dispatch, and material certificates are tied to the lot your parts were made from. TrueNorth says this plainly rather than let a logo imply something it does not yet hold.