Member Article

Warwickshire classic car firm drives profits through overseas trade

A Warwickshire company which supplies spare parts to classic car enthusiasts across the world, has driven down the cost of its own imports to boost profitability.

AH Spares, which has its headquarters in Southam and a manufacturing base in Coventry, has been operating for 50 years in the specialist market of providing spare parts for Austin Healey and Sprite vehicles.

The company employs 31 members of staff across the two sites, either buying in or making parts to be sold across the UK and throughout the world.

The firm imports some of those parts from overseas including from Europe, Australasia and USA and is now cutting the cost on them after an introduction through Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber introduced AH Spares to its Business Influence partner, RationalFX - an FCA-authorised international money- transfer service provider.

It has allowed the company to cut down on its exchange rate costs and also to ‘buy’ currency in advance of any transactions, which it means it is cheaper when products need to be bought.

Rebecca Kemsley, of AH Spares, said: “For half a century we have been serving Austin Healey owners around the world when they need spare parts either by sourcing them or making them.

“We have some regular customers but new business only comes when someone needs a spare part for the first time and then they get in touch.

“The market isn’t one that we can really grow because no more vehicles are being made so we just have to serve those existing Austin Healey owners as and when they need us. “It is, therefore, vital that we do everything to drive up our profit margin and cutting down on costs is one way of doing that.

“The Chamber introduced us to RationalFX and I thought: why not give it a go? “It has immediately saved us money on our imports because we can do all of our transactions in Dollars and they get us a very good rate. We’ve only used the service a few times now but we’ve been really pleased with it and will monitor how much we can save across the course of a year.”

Barak Chowdhury, of RationalFX, said: “The Midlands is the heart of the automotive industry in the UK and AH Spares is a great example of a company which shares a great heritage of sourcing and manufacturing quality car parts.

“Some of our UK and international clients have really suffered from Brexit and Covid, so RationalFX has a responsibility to support businesses by ensuring we are saving costs on their imports and exports but also adding value to their short-term and long-term plans by creating a hedging plan that fits within their yearly budgets.

“RFX offers individual and corporate entities with 21 multi-currency accounts for our local and international clients. Above all, we offer free consultation for brand new and existing clients that are unaware of the long list of services we offer such as forward contract, market orders and stop losses.”

Hazel Pilling, Membership and International Trade Manager at Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce, said: “AH Spares is a great example of the region’s automotive heritage continuing to thrive.

“It’s vitally important that businesses across the region trade internationally and we are pleased that, by introducing them to RationalFX, the company is saving money.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Matt Joyce .