Member Article

Durham cable manufacturer bounces back following NEL investment

A Newton Aycliffe cable manufacturing firm is bouncing back after a difficult 2015, landing a second investment round from the Finance For Business North East Growth Fund.

ATAG Cable Solutions, which designs, manufactures, tests and supplies a range of cables, is looking at putting job-creating expansion plans into action despite facing significantly bad debt only ten months ago.

In March last year, a key customer of the company went into administration, putting ATAG at threat itself.

David Hazeldine, operations director at ATAG, revealed: “Losing a key customer with little warning presented a real problem, but we saw the opportunity as well as the threat and moved quickly to take advantage of it.”

ATAG altered its business model by buying some of its customer’s assets and expanding its service offering to include cable assembly and temperature controls.

Key staff were also retained, and ATAG has since worked to fulfil the customer’s existing contracts.

In order to now fulfil the potential for growth that the ATAG management team sees in the expanded business, it has now worked with regional fund management firm NEL Fund Managers to bring in a second six figure Growth Fund investment, which it will use to help create up to eight new jobs.

ATAG initially worked with NEL in 2014, with the first investment used to support the company’s recruitment of skilled staff, development of new products and achievement of key industry quality standards.

David continued: “Being able to offer both custom cable manufacture and custom cable assemblies has substantially increased the range of projects we’re able to take on, and we think there’s the potential to grow the company’s revenues by around a third this year as a result.

“Our success has been based on the quality and reliability of our products, which are manufactured to very high standards, and maintaining that focus on quality remains a core part of the way we work.

“We’ve made a lot of progress since bringing in the first NEL investment and we think there’s still a lot for us to achieve both in domestic and overseas markets.”

Most of the businesses customers are based in the UK, but an increasing amount of work is being won overseas, and part of the latest investment will be used to target further international markets.

David Thomas, investment executive at NEL Fund Managers, adds: “The ATAG team’s ambition, vision and determination is extremely admirable, and we’re very pleased to be part of the company’s continuing evolution.”