Warwick receives an Olympic torch for Christmas

The University of Warwick was presented with one of the last Olympic torches to be made, thanks to its role in the process of manufacturing 11,700 torches for London 2012.

Wayne Woolf, Managing Director of the Premier Group, presented Professor Lord Bhattacharyya, Chairman of Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) at the University of Warwick, with the torch as an early Christmas present on 10 December.

WMG worked in collaboration with Coventry-based Premier Group, coming up with innovative ways to help shape, cut and weld the aluminium for the torches, reported the BBC.

Each of the gold-coloured aluminium torches has three sides, to represent the three occasions that the UK has hosted the Olympics, and is cut with 8,000 holes, one for each person to carry the torch on its relay tour around the country in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics.

The laser used to manufacture the torches have now been repurposed for producing parts of vehicles; WMG uses the same laser 7 days a week to make prototype parts for cars.

Lord Bhattacharyya commented: “We were delighted to supply the technical assistance that helped Premier Group manufacture the torch, and are equally delighted that we can now tell the story of how that torch was also an emblem of the latest UK automotive technology that is helping to deliver increasingly light weight and energy efficient premium vehicles”