Member Article

Europlus secures new premises with £450,000 funding package

IBM services and support company, Europlus Direct, has acquired new offices near Leeds Bradford Airport in a move designed to cater for the firm’s future growth.

The site will also be home to a Europlus Direct sister business, the multilingual recruitment and language translation company One Global.

HSBC’s Leeds and Bradford Commercial Centre has supported the acquisition of the 6,100 sq ft site, located at Airport West, via a £450,000 funding package.

The deal was led on behalf of the bank by international commercial manager Liam Penfield.

Both Europlus Direct and One Global will be based at the new premises and the latter company will be taking on three additional members of staff as a result of the move, bringing total employee numbers up to eight.

The company worked with commercial property consultants Atkinson Associates to source the property.

Europlus expects to grow turnover from £7.2m last year to £9m in 2013 on the back of further international expansion into the likes of Africa, China, Latin America and India over the next 12 months.

Europlus Direct’s founder and chief executive Jim Hart set up One Global in 2008 and the firm specialises in recruiting linguists for companies across a range of sectors, as well as providing language translation services in over 200 languages.

Hart set up One Global after finding it difficult to recruit multi-lingual staff for Europlus. The business was originally established as an in-house function but started to offer its services to the external market shortly after.

Hart said: “The move to 2 Airport West has two core benefits; it gives us the capacity to grow and it also sends out a message to our international clients that we are focused on the overseas markets and we are flexible and accessible.

“This is the logical next step in the development of the business and I’d like to thank HSBC which not onlyhelped us with this transaction, but also provides banking services to us throughout the globe.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Mark Lane .