North Tyneside manufacturing business celebrates first year with five-fold staff increase

A North Tyneside manufacturing firm is celebrating a successful first year of trading with a five-fold increase in staff numbers.

Expert Precision has expanded its workforce with 11 new staff, thanks to a number of new contract wins in the national aerospace sector.

Stephen Hornby, Michael Thompson, and Martin Stokoe, launched Expert Precision Engineering in September 2018 to manufacture parts on behalf of the oil and gas, aerospace, marine and automotive industry.

The firm began trading from Benton Business Park thanks to additional support from the North Tyneside Business Factory and a £50k loan from Virgin StartUp.

Co-founder Stephen Hornby said: “Our initial goal was to work as a sub-contractor to help fulfil precision manufacturing orders for key clients across a range of sectors.

“As it happened, we began successfully winning direct orders with customers to allow us to act as the main provider and therefore grow our team much quicker than we anticipated.

“Our initial three members of staff has now grown to 14 skilled workers with one apprentice and a number of machine operators now employed at Precision Expert Engineering in our first 12 months.

“We’ve also expanded our capacity by growing our equipment to seven machines in our original 3200 sq ft premises at Business Park.”

The business has now signed the lease to also take on the neighbouring unit which will provide an additional 4,000 sq ft to expand into.

Stephen added: “The next 12 months offer an opportunity to strengthen our internal processes in order to support our customers, ensure product quality is maintained and develop our workforce so that employee satisfaction remains strong.”

The team worked with business advisor Tracy Clarkson from the Business Factory to develop ther initial plans and source premises within North Tyneside that were suitable for their business needs.

Tracy Clarkson, business advisor at the Business Factory, added: “Expert Precision Engineering is a business with huge potential and the team have worked hard over the past 12 months to ensure that their vision for the business could develop as new opportunities presented themselves.

“I’m delighted to see the hard work of the team paying off with such considered growth and look forward to seeing the business prosper further into 2020.”

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