Ambition undimmed at marketing group

May 8 2009 by Iain Laing, The Journal

A DIRECT marketing group is looking to make more acquisitions after winning £250,000 of fresh investment.

Washington’s NEMC Group, which makes marketing material and runs a contact centre, has secured the capital from Newcastle venture capitalist NEL Fund Managers, the second made by the company.

Set up in 2001 with just a few pallets in a Washington warehouse, the NEMC group expanded to employ 40 staff thanks to grants from Sunderland City Council and the DTI and investment from NEL and built a client list that includes Mirror Group Newspapers, Balfour Beatty, OAG Worldwide, the Driving Standards Agency and Newcastle United.

As well as providing working capital and enabling the purchase of new digital printing equipment, this latest investment could help NEMC diversify by adding to the two acquisitions it has made in the past four years.

Managing director Heather Ramshaw said: “The group has performed consistently well over the years and we are aiming to continue to improve profitability and secure our customer base, but we are also not complacent and recognise the need to keep evolving and offering enhanced services to our clients.

“It’s important for our ongoing development, especially in the current economic climate, that we have an eye for new opportunities which will widen our customer offerings and complement our core direct mail activities

“The two previous acquisitions we’ve made have enabled us to bring new services into the group, which have then provided new cross-selling to our existing customer base as well as expanding the range of firms with which we can do business.

“We’re confident that we can continue to grow the business despite the current recession, and are fully aware that there may be smaller companies who are experiencing their own difficulties that might thrive if they were brought into our group, so we will continue to look at partnership, merger or buyout opportunities as they arise.” Joanne Pratt, investment executive at NEL’s debt and mezzanine finance division Evolve Finance, said: “We’ve seen NEMC Group’s business operations develop and widen at close quarters, and their ambition to continue this process remains undiminished.”