Member Article

Express breaks in to top 100 firms

Tyneside based Express Engineering Group has broken into a league table of the country’s fastest growing firms.

The Team Valley business is placed 88th in the Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track 100 list which monitors the UK’s fastest growing, privately owned operations.

As one of 13 new entrants on the list, Express has achieved an annual sales growth of 50% over the past three years, taking the turnover to almost £38 million.

Said Finance Director, Mike Blakey: “This is great news, which shows that our ambitious £18 million investment and expansion plan is paying dividends. We are now equipped with the skills and capacity to take advantage of more confident markets and anticipate further significant expansion in the medium to long term.”

A capital injection from mid-market private equity investor LDC – which took a minority equity stake in the business late in 2013 – has supported the programme, which has seen almost 100 new jobs created in 2014 – taking the workforce to just under 500 – almost four times what it was four years ago.

Express now operates its Oil and Gas division from Team Valley, Aerospace and Industrial Products Divisions from Stokesley in North Yorkshire and another sub-sea component manufacturer, Petrotec, in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Other highlights during the year include a £1.5 million investment in an unique piece of machinery. The multi-tasking Mazak machine is the first of its kind in the UK and only the second in Europe. It will allow Express to make new components, whilst ensuring that the existing products for the oil and gas exploration and extraction markets are produced more efficiently.

The purchase is part of a £6.5 million investment programme for the year which has also secured additional turning and milling machines from Scotland. All this has been installed at the new 32,000 sq. ft. site between Kingsway and Princes Way - the company’s fifth site on the Team Valley.

Fast Track 100, published each December for the past 17 years, ranks companies on sales over three years. Typical listed companies are owned and run by entrepreneurs, have between 20 and 500 staff, an average three-year sales growth of between 50% and 300% per annum and sales of between £5 million and £100 million. Around 20% have venture capital backing.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Paul Dobbie .