Boardroom boost and £120,000 investment for private equity-backed manufacturer

Strengthening its management team and completing a £120,000 modernisation of its 13-strong fleet is helping one of the UK’s oldest hot dip galvanisers emerge from lockdown with ambitious growth plans for the remainder of the year.

Corbetts the Galvanizers, which is celebrating 160 years in business, has set its sights on securing £1m of new orders from clients in the utility, automotive and leisure sectors.

The company, which was acquired by Ardenton Capital, a Canadian-based private equity specialist, in 2017, has made three appointments to boost its leadership function, with Simon Prest and Mark Stephenson joining as sales and marketing manager and procurement manager respectively, while Mick Probert has been promoted to take care of operations.

The new look team has been charged with overseeing a range of performance and efficiency improvements at the Telford site that will speed up turnaround times and deliver greater flexibility.

It comes just a few weeks after the company completed the modernisation of its fleet of vehicles, with the purchase of two additional MAN TGX articulated lorries and trailers.

Sophie Williams, finance director and general manager at Corbetts the Galvanizers, said: “Like many in manufacturing, we’ve had a really tough time with Covid-19 and had to look at how we wanted to continue to move the business forward in what will be a ‘new normal’.

“Volumes dropped as you would expect, but we remained open supplying critical contracts for the NHS and clients involved in utilities. The additional downtime has been important in helping us identify a number of production improvements and finalising the management team with the key appointments of Simon, Mark and Mick.”

She added: “The trio bring with them a fantastic mixture of technical experience within the galvanizing industry, knowledge of implementing widescale training programmes, proven marketing and commercial expertise and extensive supply chain management.

“We are really excited by the management team and it will undoubtedly give us the platform we need to hopefully achieve £1m of new business.”