NTR Ltd Case study

Weathering the recession in Wetherby

A Wetherby-based company providing many of Europe’s leading aeronautical, automotive and high precision sub-contract manufacturers with a tooling reclamation service has itself been renewed with help from the ICE Partnership and funding support from the Manufacturing Advisory Service Yorkshire & Humber.

COMPANY PROFILE

NTR Limited collects worn tooling components and brings them back to good as new standards and tolerances, often up to ten times over the components’ lifetime – saving manufacturers up to 40% each time when compared with the cost of buying new tooling.

As well as a significant cost saving there’s also a strong environmental and recycling bonus, says Managing Director Craig Naylor, and the company is benefiting from major overseas contracts in countries where the “green” agenda is particularly strong: -

“Thanks to the help we received from ICE we approach 2011 with renewed confidence and a more effective management strategy,” says Craig.

“Like many other companies, we faced a couple of challenging years as the recession kicked in, but ICE assisted us in securing £50,000 of funding which allowed us to access and make significant progress in overseas markets.”

Craig is fulsome in his praise of ICE: -

“Having ICE Partnership specialist Krys Szokalo supporting me during this period was invaluable. I could speak to him openly about what was happening both inside and outside the business and this gave me tremendous hope. He gave me the confidence and conviction to make decisions that ordinarily would have been hard to make.”

Some of the key areas addressed included close monitoring of the sales team to ensure maximum effectiveness, and a review of costs and cash management to ensure expenditures were properly managed during the recession. A benchmarking exercise with the company’s key competitors was also undertaken together with a thorough analysis of NTR’s current and potential customer base.

The company is firmly on target to achieve a turnover of £1.5m. With blue-chip clients including BAe, Rolls Royce and Land Rover and with the environmental issues on their side NTR can only prosper as the manufacturing sector regenerates itself.