Member Article

bdaily goes behind the scenes of CAT-UK with Managing Director Derek Foxcroft

Synopsis of your area of expertise:

We specialise in fuel efficiency and carbon emission reduction for transport applications. In simpler words we save vehicle operators lots of money and deliver more emission compliance capabilities to them in addition to the mainstream offering. We offer ECO-CAT as a solution to this joint attack on profitability thereby building the customer’s bottom line back up for them.

Our technology is completely different to our competitors because we create benefits and solutions before combustion occurs not after as the majority of current players do. Our expertise is developing and creating further proprietary solutions to the main issues transport faces today.

Fuel costs are rising unchecked and then emissions compliance costs are heaped on top of this huge cost which will lead to many transport operators failing to survive. Our technology helps redress the imbalance created by increasing fuel duty and planned carbon tax introductions that we will see over coming months.

ECO-CAT is capable of reducing fuel costs and emissions output to significant levels. We have seen some customers achieve more than 20% savings on fuel and even more in relation to carbon emissions. The innovation to improve what we do is continuous and will lead us to develop more and more valuable solutions that help transport operators survive.

What key challenges has your company recently faced?

The sceptical market caused by so many previous bad product offerings as well as OEM and Main Dealer apathy to ideas generated by external companies such as our own. We have also survived without funding since 2008 to get our ideas to market.

What is your biggest achievement over the past 12 months?

Demonstrating we do offer a genuine product to customers in the Republic of Ireland and North East UK where all trials led to sales. Positive cash flow when it hits for the first time is an event I hope all readers experience in their business lives, it is exhilarating to say the least!

What is your biggest focus for the coming year?

Increasing sales, brand awareness and accreditation of our product to Millbrook Standards to name a few, the real focus combines may attributes, goals and aspirations and they are all linked together to one extreme or another. Cash is king as many people say so if pushed to name one, it would have to be more sales of the profitable kind.

If you had to choose one top piece of advice for someone just starting out in business, or is currently operating within your industry sector, what would it be?

Don’t give up or listen to the negative people you come across because there are so many of them with hidden agenda’s usually aimed at deterring you from your own goals or stealing your ideas!

Can you share with us your view of the current landscape of business, in this region or generally and where your organisation sits within it?

We are all under obvious pressure due to the political and financial in-fighting we see almost every day now. The business world in the North East has, to its cost, been too grant dependent in the past and we saw the result of this unrealistic cultural trend during the recent collapse of the Public Sector Market.

We focused on delivering a solution to a real problem faced by business at any level – fuel costs. We have succeeded where many said we would fail because we stopped listening to such down beat and sullen advice from people who should have known better. Banks are not the worst!

Our organisation now sits very comfortably within the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership here in the North East as the leader in fossil fuel solutions that deliver real results. We achieved this by researching, testing, researching and testing again and again until the answers were found. We also kept talking to our intended customers, this works whoever you are!

We have proven that not getting sucked in to the constant noise of depression, cut backs, economic down turn, recession and all the other ill judged sound bites out there can create an opportunity to grow a business that will one day surprise even yourself let alone catch the competition with more than their pants down. If you know you have something, stick at it and keep your own council on the hard decisions, no-one has the courage more than you, the trick is finding where it hides within you!

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Derek Foxcroft .