Press Releases

 

Taken from the Newcastle Chronicle and Journal 21st April 2006

Shampoo, wax and your choice of trim

MOTOR product supplier Randstad is planning to double the size of its premises as it breaks into a quite different sector ? health and beauty.

Northumberland-based Randstad, which has supplied the automotive industry for three decades, says it is looking for new sectors to exploit as it moves to grow the company to a £10m turnover business in the next five years.

The family-run Cramlington firm, which has traditionally supplied car parts including wiper blades, light bulbs and bumper bars, says its position as the UK's largest importer of latex gloves will help it diversify into hair and beauty, medical and veterinary markets.

The company, which employs 35 staff, intends to double the size of its 25,000sq ft premises on its 2.5 acre site at Crowhall Road to house the expanded business.

Managing director Martin Dowd, whose brother Tony founded the company in the 1970s and is chairman, said: "Bizarrely there's lots of products that cross over from automotive into health and beauty sectors.

"Our philosophy on growing our business is quite simple ? to sell our existing customers new products or to sell new customers existing products.

"We looked at other markets that used the same products and knew that the health and beauty industry was actually selling its products, like the gloves, to our automotive industry so they were a target market."

Established in 1976 as Tyne & Wear Autoparts, the company has moved to successively larger facilities three times within Cramlington.

Its most recent relocation to the 2.5 acre freehold facility provides the company with the ability to more than double the size of its existing warehouse.

Mr Dowd said: "We spent £1m moving to this site in 2004 and the staff call the land out the back "the pitch" but I call it our expansion ground.

"It means we can more than double the size of our sales, warehousing and admin facilities as we grow further and we would hope that by the end of the decade we will have built on the land and be turning over £10m, that's the longer term goal.

"In the shorter term we will investigate new markets but also concentrate on growing our product range for the automotive sector and finding out what new products we could be selling to them."

Allied Irish Bank (GB) has worked in partnership with Randstad for 12 years, and helped fund the purchase of the company's premises in 2004. It will continue to fund and offer strategic advice on future developments.