The year was 1978, our business was concentrating on wax-oiling new cars to provide some sort of long term protection to the Northern British winter. We quickly noticed the amount of British Leyland Minis that were being produced and the volume of cars that were being prepared for export, mainly for the Japanese market, and so our business re-defined it's self to supply a constant stream of fully reconditioned used cars to foreign lands.
During the '80's we continued to thrive, amassing at one stage over 600 Minis to ship directly to Japan. Our business grew to a substantial size with many thousands of square feet of factory space. The market decline of the 1990's takes hold when we were struck with the rapid decline of the Japanese Yen to the Pound. We quickly needed to adapt our business model and decided to start producing the raw components to the car in house in order to sell aftermarket spares to the UK and European markets. Starting with the basic boot board brackets we quickly expanded the product range to cover over eight hundred and sixty individual items, leading to tremendous investment in plant and machinery. In 1994 we move to more modern premises where to continue to manufacture panels and parts to this day.
Engineering and Metals was borne of the panels part of the company, manufacturing our own press-tools and being able to draw upon our own stock of materials was always a requirement for us to be able to reduce manufacturing costs and be able to refine our tooling to ensure that our panels fit the car perfectly. With the addition and purchase of one of our suppliers (MCM Metals) we acquired sufficient stock to be able to offer materials to the general public and other small businesses alike. Our Engineering department continued to grow with extending contacts in the rail and deep ocean industries, which promoted further investment in modern CNC machining centres, laser cutting machines and CNC press brakes.
This leads us to the present day where we continue to provide three distinct services, Mini panels (and parts), Metals and Precision Engineered Components.