Vanguard Foundry resilient in the face of worst recession for decades
12th February 2010
Margot James visited Vanguard, traditional Lye based foundry and met with joint Managing Directors, John Willetts and Chris Mintern.
Vanguard specialise in the manufacture of iron castings for the turbo-charging, diesel engine and general engineering sectors.
Sales fell by fifty per cent from £8.8m to £4.4m last year compared to 2008. Responding to this has led Vanguard to cut its night shift with the result that some 35 employees have been made redundant. Vanguard is a family firm who value its staff and they have kept in touch with the men who have left in the hope that as business picks up again they will be re-hired.
Vanguard work very hard on quality and speed of response in order to compete with the Far East. The Vanguard standard is three weeks from order to delivery. It was salutary to hear about a company in the Black Country that had been bought by an Indian Company who proceeded to transfer production to India. The transfer was a complete failure as it takes a minimum of six weeks to ship castings to Europe from India and China and there was not enough business locally.
Margot was pleased to hear that Vanguard was one of very few local companies to be benefiting from Government support. The Manufacturing Advisory Service and Business Link are providing nearly £30,000 of funding to help with cost reduction and the identification of new markets. What is wrong with this system is that by taking up the offer of support a company is then mandated to use an ‘approved consultant’ to manage the project when they have the resources in house to undertake the work.
Margot said “The support for manufacturing companies is a good use of taxpayer’s money but the use of an external consultancy to undertake what a company can do for itself is not and I am sure this will be reviewed as part of the overhaul planned for business support services if the Conservatives form a government”.
