Road work is a blast with newest machine
Oct 16 2007 by Chris Knox, The Journal
A COMPANY that maintains the region’s road markings is to expand rapidly after buying a £250,000 hydro-blasting machine.
Coupe Group, of Chester-le-Street, believes the machine, which uses a high-pressure water jet to remove road markings, will boost turnover from £2.5m to £3.5m within two years by dramatically speeding up maintenance work.
The family-run road making and marking firm previously burnt off markings, a lengthy and messy process which released dangerous chemicals to the atmosphere.
Mark Coupe, manager at its thermoplastics site in Shildon, said the machine took five seconds to dispense with one metre of road markings, compared with two minutes using the burning process.
He said: “The new hydro-blasting machine is unique to the North-East and as such we are confident that it will help expand our operation considerably.
“Although the machine can be expensive to operate, local councils will feel the benefit of quicker turnaround times and a reduction in public inconvenience.” The business has built a 10,000sq ft extension to its factory at Hackworth Industrial Park in County Durham as part of plans to add 18 staff to its 70-strong workforce over two years. Coupe plans to move a proportion of its thermoplastics business to the 20,000sq ft site to help meet demand.
Coupe, which derives 80% of turnover from public-sector contracts, uses thermoplastics to create the road markings.
Mr Coupe said: “In the past, it wasn’t possible to maintain optimum stock levels on site and this affected response times, but with the extra space we no longer need to operate on a just-in-time basis and can now not only concentrate production of road marking materials in one location, but can meet demand more easily.
“We also have space for a proper fitting shop for our fleet of vehicles, which is important since they may be working on contracts in Perthshire one week and Norfolk the next.”
The business was set up in 1984 by Jack Coupe as a building and road construction firm before going into marking in 1986. Son Martin was recruited in 1993 to head the manufacturing side, and his younger brother Mark joined to manage its thermoplastics business in 1998.
