Leeds electronics firm looks to ‘Futures’ following VC investment

A Leeds-based manufacturer of electronics systems is looking to significantly grow after attracting investment from a venture capitalist and teaming up with a recruitment specialist to expand its team.

Instrumentel has just made five new appointments, consisting of three engineers as well as a project manager and office manager, through recruitment specialist Manufacturing Futures, which is part of the recruitment company Futures.co.uk and also based in Leeds.

The recruiter has already been tasked with sourcing another five employees over the coming months as Instrumentel looks to build a 20-strong team on the back of a string of contract wins.

This follows Instrumentel securing a significant investment from Birmingham-based venture capitalist Alycidon Capital Limited, which has collaborated with electronics and technology companies in the past.

Instrumentel, based in the Leeds Innovation Centre, was founded in 2001 as a spin-out from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Leeds. The firm’s products provide an insight into operational performance in extreme environments throughout the rail, automotive and industrial industries, and have a wide range of uses from measuring the piston parameters in Formula One engines through to monitoring the conditions inside nuclear waste containers.

Instrumentel has also secured a major contract which will see its products used by Melbourne Metro and a number of other operators, to monitor the performance of train door systems throughout Australia. The system is already used on trains throughout the world and is able to highlight when a train door is about to encounter a fault so it can be repaired in advance of it breaking down significantly, reducing in-service failures and maintenance costs.

Dr David McGorman, Instrumentel’s Chief Executive, explained: “It’s a great time for Instrumentel and after working in a wide range of niche industries and areas, we are now in a position to expand into a number of mainstream markets. As part of this strategy we are planning to expand the territories we sell our rail products into, with particular emphasis on Australia and the EU. We also plan to commoditise our F1 engine monitoring technology to enable sales to car manufacturers. The investment from Alycidon Capital Limited will help facilitate this as we increase our design and production capacity, along with improving our product support facilities.

“Expanding our team is key to our continued success and working with Manufacturing Futures provides us with an efficient and straightforward way of achieving this. The recruiter already has a huge range of contacts within our industry enabling them to immediately introduce us to people that have the skillsets we require, as well as matching the culture of our business. This is evident with our current new starters who are immediately proving to be valuable members of our team and we’re delighted to have them on board at such an exciting time for Instrumentel.”

Chris Griffin of Manufacturing Futures added: “There are very few people in the UK with the necessary skills, experience and profile that Instrumentel require so recruiting the right people for them is far from straightforward. If we searched through traditional recruitment means, such as adverts, job boards, LinkedIn, headhunting and networking, to fill vacancies, we’d have the same struggles many other recruitment firms face.

“However, we differ from other recruiters in our approach. We proactively target candidates ahead of time and invest significant time and resources into knowing and speaking to people across the sectors we operate in, before an opportunity arises, so we can put the right people forward very quickly when a client need arises. This strategy has been hugely successful for Instrumentel.”

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