ZAHRA ALI
KAREN WYNARD
Taking the legal line
NISA than ISA?
Interview - Page 3
Column - Page 6
HUDDERSFIELD EXAMINER TUESDAY, APRIL 22, 2014
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An EXAMINER publication
KIRKLEES BUSINESS NEWS The business NEWSpaper for Kirklees
By HENRYK ZIENTEK Business Reporter henryk.zientek@examiner.co.uk
A Brighouse business laying claim to be the biggest fan manufacturer in England is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Halifax Fan Company, which hit the £10m turnover figure during 2013, has grown to become a global force in fan engineering. The firm, based at Brookfoot Business Park, puts its success down to continuous investment in the business and in its people. Over the last 50 years, the company has accumulated an enormous depth of skill within its long serving personnel. One of the company’s engineers, chief draftsman Steve Thomas, will clock-up 40 years of service this year – as will three others during the next five years. Halifax’s 50 years of experience has been put at the customer’s fingertips with a new fan configuration tool on the company’s website – making the firm’s design knowledge and making it available on a simple “tick-box” format for any engineer anywhere in the world to use. The company has also invested heavily
in tooling, in computerisation and in software tools for design and analysis. The biggest investment has come with the building of a new factory in China to take the firm’s business to the world’s busiest marketplace. The factory now employs more than 70 personnel – many UK-trained – and occupies more than 5,000 sq metres. Offices staffed by trained engineers, who provide a consultancy service on the company’s products, have been opened in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Bangkok. Company managing director Malcolm Staff said: “There’s an old saying that when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. “We had to take our expertise to where there was a strong market for it and that has paid real dividends. “We sell fans of quality, reliability and efficiency and that’s exactly what the South East Asian market wants. “They have a real focus on lifecost rather than first-cost and we provide fans that operate efficiently and don’t break down, so lifetime costs are greatly reduced.” From making simple fans for the textile industry, the company now
manufactures fans small and large for the widest possible spectrum of industries and specialises in high safety ATEX certified fans for the likes of the petrochemical industry. Halifax engineers helped write the European Union regulations on ATEX fans and are now involved in formulating the EU directive on fan efficiency. Mr Staff said the growth of China’s and South East Asia’s industrial infrastructure offered great opportunities. The new office in Shanghai would support some of the world’s most prominent engineering concerns and consultancies, many of whom had located regional offices to Shanghai to service the expanding market. “Manufacturing in China has given us a great edge,” said Mr Staff. “Potential customers can visit the factory easily, delivery is quicker and cheaper and our competitiveness is enhanced by buying materials and manufacturing locally. “Brighouse is still the company’s design and development stronghold, but cloud computing means the UK and Chinese factories are no farther apart than the nearest computer keyboard.”
■■ A large centrifugal fan supplied by Brighouse-based Halifax Fan to a steel works in Redcar
‘Distress’ levels hit record low for Yorkshire businesses A record low of just 18% of businesses in Yorkshire and the North East are showing signs of business distress, according to the latest Business Distress Index from R3, the insolvency trade body. The latest figure compares with the UK tally of 33% - also a record-breaking low. R3 has tracked five key indicators of business distress since March, 2012 – including decreasing profits, sales volumes or market share, the regular use of maximum overdraft facilities and new redundancies. Each indicator measures the share of UK businesses experiencing that particular sign of distress. In the latest survey, all indicators are at or near record lows. The share of businesses in the region experiencing at least one sign of distress is now less than a third of businesses in the same position when the survey first started in March,
2012 (63%). Chris Wood, Yorkshire R3 vice-chairman and partner at Clough Corporate Solutions in Cleckheaton, said: “Business distress has tumbled over the past two years as businesses have got over the worst of the recession and it is encouraging to see that the level in Yorkshire and the North East is almost half of the relatively low national level. This has been matched by steadily falling corporate insolvency numbers. “Historically, business failures increase as the economy bounces back. “Rapid economic growth can be a problem for a business that used up cash reserves in a recession or that isn’t prepared for expansion. “However, low interest rates and the much slower recovery we have had up until the last nine months or so have bought struggling businesses in our area
■■ Chris Wood, of insolvency trade body R3
time to sort out their problems.” Mr Wood said: “It is interesting to see, however, that business distress has been falling much more slowly over the past six months than it had done previously. It may be that distress levels are falling
back to ‘normal’ levels or that the recent pick-up in the economy is beginning to have an effect.” R3’s latest survey also found that indicators of business growth in Yorkshire and the North East remain close to the record highs hit in the last survey in autumn 2013. Some 66% of businesses are showing at least one sign of growth, slightly up from 63% in October, 2013, and a huge rise from just 29% in March, 2012. Signs of business growth in the region include investing in new equipment (40%), increased sales volumes (40%), increased profits (42%), business expansion (38%) and growing market share (27%). Mr Wood said: “It’s very encouraging that business growth is keeping pace with the record figures we saw in the autumn.”
Prize for research A specialist in the development of engine oils has won an award for his work. Dr Rai Singh Notay, product development engineer at Brighousebased Millers Oils, secured first prize in the Communication in Engineering competition run by the Yorkshire automotive division of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers for his experimental research into lubrication degradation. Notay, who wrote his paper as part of a PhD, explored how oil degradation and flow around engine components can be affected by new automotive technology trends.
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Contact points Yorkshire business people are among the UK’s most active face-to-face networkers, according to new research. The study commissioned by accountancy firm Ernst & Young found that 61% of people surveyed in the region said that they network in person, the second highest percentage in the UK behind only Northern Ireland at 82%. Face-to-face contact was followed by email (50%) and telephone (37%) in a list of ways people network in the region.