Member Article

What a year – 2017 highlights and a look at what’s next!

As 2017 draws to a close, UNTHA UK’s managing director Marcus Brew reflects on another massive year for the company before offering a sneaky peek into what’s coming up in the 12 months ahead…

“12 months is a long time in any business, let alone one changing as quickly as ours. So, I hope all of our clients, partners and suppliers can look back fondly on 2017, proud of what they have achieved this year.

The economic environment has continued to place external pressures on businesses large and small, and ours has been no different. We’ve had to contend with factors such as a weakened pound, a limited labour market and a lack of Government support for the environmental agenda. And that’s before we talk specifically about the dreaded ‘B word’.

Brexit certainly continued to fill a number of companies with dread during 2017 and the persistent uncertainty surrounding ‘what’s next’ caused many organisations to simply stop what they were doing altogether.

It was extremely disappointing to read constant news of prolific projects being paused. I’ve always said that this fear is understandable, but knee-jerk reactions kill the market.

We’ve therefore tried to remain headstrong, flexible and focused on life beyond Brexit, so that we can build a robust company regardless of the Government’s progress with regards to the EU.

We continued to reshape our strategy as the year unfolded, for example, and the effort has paid dividends. We’ve made the most of the shredding versatility within our product range and started talking to different sectors, about the need to tackle different input materials, at different points in the supply chain.

As a result, our order book is now made up of clients large and small that are embarking on extremely diverse waste, recycling and product destruction projects. This variety presents a very mixed yet healthy engineering ‘make up’ for UNTHA UK, well into 2019, not just next year! I’d encourage other firms throughout the sector to be equally open-minded and flexible in their approach, so they don’t find themselves going down a blind alley in the months ahead.

Despite economic pressures, we’ve continued to invest heavily in the company too, and not just in terms of the technology we offer. Yes, we’ve brought some exciting new innovations to market, such as the QR shredder which took the PPMA Show by storm when we held the UK launch back in September.

But our investment has stretched much further than our engineering budget. We’ve ploughed thousands into staff development, the construction of more robust internal systems and processes, a new CRM infrastructure, the maintenance of our ISO accreditation hat-trick and the ongoing refurbishment and expansion of our HQ.

So what’s next for UNTHA?

We couldn’t reflect on 2017 without mentioning the departure of our industry stalwart Chris Oldfield, who retired from his role as chairman in October. The conclusion of his 50-year career hit virtually all of the waste and recycling headlines, which was a pertinent testament to the decades of effort he has ploughed in to making the sector a more innovative and accomplished place.

But he left UNTHA UK knowing there was a talented, equipped and forward-thinking team in place ready to build on his legacy.

So, as we prepare for what we hope will be our biggest year yet, I look forward to unveiling new products, new customer support packages, and even more flexible finance packages that will help clients large and small invest in our shredding solutions.

We’ve been working hard, behind the scenes, on further developments to our waste shredding systems, and have a number of end-to-end turnkey projects in the pipeline for 2018, which we can’t wait to start talking about.

We’ve got some key team appointments on the horizon too, to further strengthen the solid skill-set at our North Yorkshire HQ, and overseas there are some exciting changes taking place for our Austrian parent company in Salzburg.

Some of this may sound a little vague at present, but we don’t want to totally give the game away! I think, in summary, it’s safe to say 2018 could be a very exciting year for us, so watch this space!

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Katie Mallinson .