Partner Article

Funding boost for Sunderland firm

An industrial equipment supplier expects to double its annual turnover to £5m and expand nationally after landing £150,000 in new investment.

Wearside’s Precision Geomatics, which supplies various types of equipment to the construction and manufacturing sectors, believes new funding from NEL Fund Managers will help it exploit the expected upturn in the building industry.

The company already has long-term relationships with many of the biggest construction, housebuilding and surveying companies in the North East, Cumbria, Yorkshire and Scotland.

With the £150,000 funding boost from NEL, it is now both expanding its coverage of the UK and developing additional income streams through offering new products and services.

Precision Geomatics recently secured the contract to sell innovative new computer software that monitors and controls street lighting systems, and has just secured its first deal to supply the system to Blackpool Borough Council, with other similar local authority contracts already in the pipeline.

A new e-commerce-enabled website will also help the firm increase its reach right across the UK.

The company has almost doubled its workforce in the last six years, from 15 to 28, and it has plans to grow this figure even more over the next 12 months.

The firm was formed in 2004, when managing director Gwyneth Bell completed a management buy-out of the Sunderland survey centre of Japanese equipment manufacturer SOKKIA, of which she had been the regional director.

Ms Bell said: “Diversification has enabled us to become a one stop shop for many of our customers, and we are reinforcing this trend through further widening our product range and establishing ourselves as a truly UK-wide operator.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .