Peterlee firm MetroMail expects to increase turnover

Feb 24 2010 by Chris Knox, The Journal

A PRINTING company has invested £600,000 in new machinery which has helped it to break into the financial services sector - and the firm expects to add £5m to its turnover as a result.

Peterlee-based MetroMail has invested the money in a large-scale envelope inserter, which is capable of filling and enclosing 12,000 envelopes an hour and is being used by the company to produce paper statements on behalf of a growing list of high street banking clients.

The new equipment follows a series of other investments by the company, which last year saw it inject £5m to allow it to step up the rate at which it prints its mail inserts, envelopes and polythene wraps.

The machine, which is believed to be the biggest of its kind in the North East, has already helped the firm secure three contracts with major financial services companies, worth a total of £580,000. The firm, which has a 250-strong workforce, now believes it can add £1m to its sales for each year over the next five, which will see its turnover reach £15m by 2015.

The company said that it had benefited from the downturn, with many of its clients moving over from some of its struggling rivals as a result of its willingness to invest in new equipment.

The companies badly hit included Reed Print and Design, which was forced to put its Washington site into administration two years ago with 128 staff losing their jobs.

MeroMail has also managed to achieve much of its success by basing its strategy along the lines of an automotive manufacturing plant – a business model which recently saw it introduce a third night-time shift.

Managing director Alan Purvis said: “Over the past four years we’ve invested about £8.5m to re-equip our site and we plan further spending during 2010 as we work to further increase efficiency and market share.

“The past year has been the best in the 21 years since the company started.”

The firm added 30 workers to the factory last year as a result of the increased capacity, but said that it was not expecting to create further jobs in the short-term and is currently up-skilling current members of staff to work on the new machines.

Mr Purvis said: “Despite the economic downturn we’ve won new customers and increased business and this latest acquisition will allow us to target the financial services sector because it ensures we can achieve 100% accuracy all of the time with our mail-outs.

“The fact that we have already established a forward order book of £580,000 within the financial services sector means that the new machine has already paid for itself.”