Datatron hopes to double turnover to £1m

Mar 18 2010 by Chris Knox, The Journal

A DOCUMENT management company that handles sensitive information for local councils hopes to almost double its turnover to £1m by acquisition and investing in new technology.

North Shields-based Datatron has grown each year since purchasing its newest digital copier from the USA three years ago, which has helped it to increase production from 500,000 copies a week to 800,000.

The company, which has scanned more than 200 million documents for organisations throughout the UK, has since increased its staff from 24 to 28 and now expects to grow beyond the 30 mark over the coming months.

The firm also recently acquired Sunderland-based Micro-Image Document Systems, which has allowed it to enter a number of markets within the private sector, including digital invoicing.

It has also injected additional investment in installing a digital tracking system, which allows clients to check where their documents are during the scanning stage.

The company, which is looking to complete an additional acquisition over the coming months, said that it had previously seen a shortfall in contracts from the private sector as a result of the economic downturn, but said that this had been re-balanced by a rise in public sector business as a result of a series of data loss scandalous in 2007.

Figures from the Liberal Democrats said that record 37 million items of personal data went missing in the public sector in 2007, with most of the data lost by government officials.

David Popay, managing director of Datatron, said: “We have remained at the forefront of our industry through continued investment in innovative technologies which has helped us to maintain a competitive edge.

“The benefits this investment has provided to a significant amount of existing clients will has had an immediate effect on our turnover.”

“Since the data loss stories, central and local government have been far stricter on how they record and monitor data, which has helped us secure our contracts in these areas.”

The business serves clients from across the UK as well as many in this region, including Newcastle NHS Trust, which now has the largest digital medical records archived in the UK, most of the region’s local council and affordable housing manager East Durham Homes.

Mr Popay said: “Datatron is continuing to seek new opportunities to develop and we have many new ideas that we are currently developing and testing that will provide added value to all our clients. We are also currently in talks over the purchase of a second business to help us grow further.”