Member Article

Arrow Solutions celebrates 40 years of Norwegian sales with £1m target

Arrow Solutions is celebrating 40 years of selling its industry-leading cleaning and maintenance chemicals in Norway by strengthening its partnership with a key distributor.

The Moira-based firm has announced an extension to its agreement with Aco Kjemi, which will see it provide more support to help increase market share for core products including Lotoxane®, Delta and EcoWash Autoshine.

Backed by a significant new marketing campaign and more technical training, it is expected that the partnership will generate more than £1m of sales over the next twelve months as the demand for safer, environmentally friendly cleaning products grows.

“Norway has always been a key territory for us, going back nearly four decades,” explained James Lomas, Sales Manager for Arrow Solutions.

“We are reaffirming our commitment to Aco Kjemi and exploring ways where we can work even closer together to meet our customer’s requirements in the advanced engineering, energy, marine, oil and gas and transport sectors.”

He went on to add: “More than £25,000 is being invested in developing a dedicated Norwegian promotional video, PR campaigns and the introduction of more specialist training so their sales representatives know exactly what differentiates Arrow products in the marketplace.

“There’s a lot of potential for our solutions to make a big difference to companies looking for high performance cleaning and maintenance solutions that ‘do the job’ but are also kind to the environment. This includes industrial degreasers, train wash and aircraft cleaners.”

Aco Kjemi was formed in 1976 by Tom Brunsvik and Stein Harald Iversen after they discovered a brand new product, a water-based degreaser that in many cases could replace White Spirit in the Norwegian industry.

They found ‘Superclean Concentrate’ by accident and traced it back to Arrow Solutions and this was the start of a 40-year relationship that has grown considerably ever since.

Mr. Elvin Bugge and Hans Erik Tofte, the owners of Aco Kjemi today, have taken this further and developed a huge business platform in Norway for the products.

Current MD Kim Brunsvik, son of founder Tom, added his support: “We are very proud to be a supplier of Arrow Solutions products and believe that our 40th anniversary is the ideal time to set a new strategy for growing our business in key sectors, such as energy, offshore and advanced engineering.

“It’s an exciting time to be involved and I’m delighted to see additional support will be given to help us focus on new opportunities to tap into Norway’s ongoing drive for greener products. For example, some of the aerosol range is powered by compressed air (pbca), which reduces carbon dioxide emissions considerably.

“There has also been significant interest in Lotoxane®, which is a fantastic odourless degreaser ideal for removing residues of oils, greases and machine coolant. The fact it is not classed as flammable is proving extremely popular.”

He concluded: “In Norway, we have some of the strictest environmental standards in the world and our customers know that Arrow products meet all of these requirements as well as providing high performance cleaning and maintenance.”

To mark the 40 year celebrations, 39 Aco Kjemi staff visited the East Midlands for a tour of Arrow Solutions’ manufacturing facility in Moira and a celebration dinner where founder Tom Brunsvik was presented with a special gift to mark the longevity of the partnership.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Russ Cockburn .