The future is bright - and set in France

Mar 11 2008 by jez Davison, Evening Gazette

THE prospect of retirement doesn’t phase Kevin Lloyd. In fact, he’s had his eyes fixed on this landmark day for years.

“I’m going to retire to France - Bordeaux region, probably - and travel the world. I’ll go to Goa in India. I’ve met some marvellous people there.”

You see, for Kevin, work is a means to an end. He plans to put his 15-year-old son through university, build up a £10m business and sell it before heading for a new life in Southern France. And he won’t miss the cut and thrust of business one jot.

So how can a stereotypical North-east grafter slip so seamlessly into a life of vineyards and fine art?

“Dead easy,” he says. “If I’ve grafted for 30 years I want to be rewarded at the end of it. Making money is all well and good but if you don’t find time to enjoy it, what’s the point? People sometimes forget that they’re a long time dead.”

Acklam born and bred, he is already planning for the day when he can hand over the reins of his business, Netting Services Ltd (NSL), to someone else. At the moment, that time seems some way off - the business turns over around £1m. It’s got to reach £10m during the next three or four years before Kevin makes his exit.

As all good entrepreneurs do, he has set himself some short-term goals. At the moment, he is seeking £250,000 of funding through Business Link to launch two safety products for the construction industry - prototypes are at development stage - and he hopes they’ll boost turnover to £4.5m within two years, creating an additional 30 jobs in the process.

His confidence in his ability to achieve these targets is based on hard evidence. Last week, it was revealed that as part of a safety crackdown, Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspectors served 19 enforcement notices to contractors and stopped work on eight construction sites in the North-east - including two sites on Teesside - due to concerns about working without sufficient protection.

More than half the HSE’s enforcement action taken during a national round of inspections was against dangerous work at height, which last year led to the death of 23 workers. As a result, demand for man-safe netting for building sites - NSL’s premier product - has risen rapidly in recent years as companies come under pressure to comply with increasingly stringent legislation.

Kevin, who established the Billingham-based firm with a £10,000 Enterprise Start-up Grant from Hartlepool Council in 2004, makes no apologies for capitalising on the “bureaucrats” who are responsible for the red tape.

He says: “I hate bureaucrats - that’s the one thing that really gets me annoyed. But the truth is that falls from height is one of the biggest killers of workers in the UK and construction firms have to look more closely at their operations. Safe netting is a relatively embryonic market and should be a real growth area for us in the next few years.”

To ensure its equipment and fixing procedures meet industry standards, the company is working closely with experts at the University of Teesside. Operations manager at NSL, Mark McKenna, deals with the university’s Paul Shelton and Tony Bonner on a daily basis and all three have been an “immense help” to Kevin.

“Rigorous ongoing testing is an absolute must for us”, he says. “Our reputation is on the line every time we commission our products for use.”

Last year he had a chance to make an earlier than expected escape to France but decided to reject an undisclosed offer from a major UK plc for his business.

“The time wasn’t right”, he says. “I saw far more potential for quick growth and if I’d got out then I’d have felt it was a job only half done.”