New contracts push sales up at IESA

SEVERAL new major outsourcing contracts helped Warrington manufacturing supplier IESA push up sales last year.

The company operates stores on clients’ premises to help them avoid having too much capital tied up in stock.

It has 95 such stores and counts blue-chips such as General Electric, Premier Foods, Siemens and Northern Foods as customers.

In the year to March 31 turnover rose 7% to £37.9m. The gross margin rose nearly 1% to 17.1% but pre-tax profit fell by around a third to £611,000 after taking into account higher administrative costs.

The company, which employs 150 staff, also made a provision for £419,000 after a major customer Visteon UK went into administration.

The business is controlled by chief executive Ben Caldwell whose cousins ran Caldwell’s Manufacturing, an historic engineering business that went into administration last year. IESA was part of Caldwell’s until January 2008.