Blackburn-based industrial automation spare parts and repair supplier Northern Industrial has expanded its own premises to provide additional office space catering for up to fifty-five additional staff.
The expansion comes after a new record year for turnover and profits, which follows 27% average organic growth over the last 5 years.
New stairways and office partitions were built by Blackburn-based Bryan Lee Building Contractors to open-up previously unused space above the company’s 30,000 sq ft repair facility on Shadsworth Business Park.
Currently employing 40 office staff and over 30 electronic engineers, the expansion is intended to allow for anticipated further growth for the company, which already exports to customers in 132 countries worldwide.
A multi-award-winning provider of new, reconditioned and obsolete parts and repair services, sourcing from over 1,350 manufacturers, the company covers over 200,000 part numbers, holding approximately £7m in stock.
Office roles include administration, marketing and customer service, with multilingual staff working with customers across the globe.
Managing director David Lenehan said: “The last few years have been great for us and every indication is that it will only get better. Although we have customers in a wide variety of manufacturing disciplines, one thing they all have in common is they want to avoid downtime at all costs. Because of the nature of what we do, we’ve found we’re not only pretty recession proof, but we actually start to do even better when the economy starts to slow down.
“Sometimes you just need someone on your side in a stressful breakdown situation. Our aim is to provide the spare parts and repairs customers need as quickly as possible to minimise downtime. We specialise in keeping businesses up and running, with high quality industrial electronic spare parts, repairs and onsite support.
“We employ the best electronic engineers and provide all customers with a dedicated account manager to keep them up-to-date, while our sourcing team use the most thorough methods and industry knowledge to track down hard-to-find obsolete parts
“The only real challenge we have in terms of business growth is finding the right staff. Many of our engineers are ex-military, which is testimony to a ‘needs-must’ attitude. Due to the rapid advancements in industrial automation, many manufacturers are finding equipment used on their production lines to be obsolete. Without the support of the original equipment manufacturer, many manufacturers are looking to us to provide continued support rather than doing an expensive upgrading. In a recession, this is amplified.
“Because we export literally throughout the world, we need bi or multi-lingual, technically-minded office staff to help customers get what they need. Brexit has made that a bit more challenging, coming as a bit of a shock to some of our European staff. But we feel confident that our fully inclusive culture here means we will continue to grow together in the long term.”
