Story supplied by www.goldwyns.co.uk

AN emphasis on service and quality, not price and profit, has created a very successful manufacturing business in Essex.

In October 2017, Essex Injection Mouldings Ltd celebrated its 30th anniversary. It has grown to become one of the largest injection moulding firms in Essex employing 25 people. However, the three decades in business have not always been easy.

When husband and wife team, Maureen and Ed Edwards, started their Southend-based business in 1987, Ed handled the clients and the day-to-day engineering work whilst Maureen, a part-time banker, did the bookkeeping and over-saw the finances in her spare time.

With great tenacity, sheer hard graft and a little help from their accountants, Goldwyns Ltd, they’ve not only kept the business on track but have built it into a firm which last year saw a turnover of £1.7million.

Maureen said: “We're proud of what we have achieved through hard work, the support of our staff and the good advice from experts like Arthur [Millman] at Goldwyns”.

The firm is unusual in that it offers a “one stop shop” service to take products from concept to finished product in one easy operation.

The business is founded on excellence and quality control so that clients who require precision, whether for 20 products or 20 million, are guaranteed a perfect product – every time.

Another bonus for clients is, of course, there is no delay with shipments from across the world as the firm handles everything at its site in Southend, and within easy reach of the UK’s road and rail networks.

The Essex Injection Mouldings ‘mould shop’ can produce anything from a simple washer to a complex technical moulding. They offer a wide range of services from mould trial and short runs to high volume production, using a large variety of materials.

This makes the firm much admired by clients who are themselves in ‘precision’ businesses – medical equipment, electrical parts, aviation, automotive components and environmental equipment firms, for instance.

Their big breakthrough for the start-up three decades ago came when they were chosen by Britannia Music to create, design, mould and manufacture CD racks.

The company was the leading supplier at the time of free CDs that were a major promotional tool of weekend newspaper supplements.

CD clubs handed out CDs recommended by the newspapers and the collections built by readers soon needed storage. Britannia turned to Essex Injection Mouldings to design, develop and produce a CD rack that could be given away to readers.

It needed to be a robust, flat-pack item that would slip through the recipients’ letterboxes. Over ten years, four million racks landed through the letterboxes of British consumers. Eventually, Britannia was bought out by Polygram and the CD fad was overtaken by other technologies. But Maureen and Ed have never looked back.

Ed learnt his trade when, after leaving school at 15, he became an apprentice pressed toolmaker in North London until the age of 21. He went on to work for Matchbox Toys in Enfield and it was through colleagues there that he met Maureen.

Four years on, in 1972, he and Maureen decided to marry. Living in North London was unaffordable so Ed’s boss suggested he could work for Matchbox near Rayleigh if he could find a home there.

He began his new role as a charge hand and went on to become a foreman overseeing 120 people. Then redundancy struck. Ed found another post but quickly went on to form a partnership with four other former Matchbox Toys employees.

A partnership of five people proved unworkable, however, and Ed decided to return to his original skill, that of tool-making, and to be his own boss.

Maureen meantime was working for Barclays Bank. They went on to have two children. When Ed and Maureen set up their business, Maureen was dividing her life into three segments: banker, mother and part-time financial controller for the business.

The pair got to know Arthur Millman, the accountant who has helped them manage the financial aspects of the business, virtually from the start, because he’d worked with the now defunct partnership.

It wasn’t until a year had passed therefore that he could work with Maureen and Ed. Since forging a relationship, Arthur Millman has been on hand to advise the company and the two directors whenever guidance has been needed. “We wouldn’t be where we are without Goldwyns,” says Maureen.

“When we began, the bank was helpful. We refinanced the house and we were lucky that our mortgage was small. The refinancing enabled us to buy plant and equipment.

“We couldn’t find anywhere suitable to rent so we bought a factory with a 100 per cent mortgage. Our bank manager asked ‘what was the incentive for the bank?’

We explained we would have to sell the flat where Ed’s parents were living and the parents would have had to move in with us if it went wrong. That convinced the bank – and us – that it was incentive enough to make it work.”

They now operate out of four interconnecting buildings, three of which they own, covering 10,000 sq. feet in total and which have gradually been acquired over the three decades. “Our accountant and the bankers suggested we move into a single building but I prefer the flexibility this gives us,” says the ever-cautious Maureen.

“If business falls away, we can always downsize and divest ourselves of one of the buildings without too much trouble,” she explains. The firm began with two machines costing £1,000 each; now the firm owns around £2 million worth of plant and equipment.

When they started, Ed soldiered on alone doing the work and then the following year they took on one employee whilst Maureen continued her day job in a bank.

Initially, Ed worked seven days a week. Maureen realised if she was ever to see her husband, they needed to work together. Later, Maureen insisted he take Sunday afternoons off to see her and the children so he went ‘part-time’ working only six and a half days a week – for ten years.

Realising the value of a local firm delivering great quality, clients emerged through word of mouth publicity. “We’ve never had a sales team,” says Maureen proudly.

Clients have been, and are, many and varied. Essex Injection Mouldings has made caps for cosmetic bottles; undertaken work for the Ministry of Defence; and created safety critical, surgical equipment components for KeyMed (part of the Olympus Group) such as technical, surgical theatre trollies and endoscopes.

Essex Injection Mouldings Ltd continues to serve Rega, the company’s very first customer gained in 1987, for which they continue to provide components for their precision hi-fi equipment.

The aeronautical industry also required precision tooling and manufacturing. Another client is IPECO, suppliers of virtually every pilot seat in every plane in the world, according to Maureen Edwards.

“We also made other sensitive component parts for planes,” she says. “Even coffee makers, when used on a plane, must be subject to stringent rules and regulations down to the last nut and bolt in order to make them safe”.

The IPECO business came about when, as a nominee for the 2006 Southend Business Awards manufacturing category, the MD of IPECO, who was on the judging panel, came to see the operation. He was so impressed by what he saw that he approached them later and trialled their service.

“We completed two jobs to more than their satisfaction, so they took us on as one of their preferred suppliers,” says Maureen.

The biggest customer is not in music, aeronautical or medical equipment, however. It is in pest control. Essex Injection Mouldings makes traps for Pelsis who supply the likes of Rentokil internationally, creating one million mouse boxes and half a million rat boxes every year. They have even spotted one of their rat boxes outside Number 10 Downing Street.

Maureen attributes part of the success directly to the advice given by Arthur Millman of Goldwyns. “He advised us personally – for instance, guiding us on structuring a loan when we wanted to move house after living in the same house for 28 years. He met with the bank and our pensions adviser and between them they worked out a plan.

“But the biggest help was when he advised us on buying our second unit. The bank owned it because the previous occupier had defaulted. We went to get a mortgage on Black Friday and I remember the rates went up three times that day. We agreed to rent initially but agreed a sale price and bought a year later. Arthur was the one who enabled us to widen our customer premises and expand our customer base. As a result, having taken on ten people, we took on another six. The business changed significantly and for the better.”

The two directors are clear that they wouldn’t be where they are if it wasn’t for the people they work with. “We pride ourselves on service. We make a profit but don’t take people for a ride,” says Maureen.

The ethos of integrity applies not only to customers but to the 25 people who work for the company. The company was always reluctant to take on staff when they couldn’t guarantee work so in the early days, family members came and helped out with a glut of work whilst other family members looked after the children.

Later, when there was a lean time, rather than making people redundant, they simply asked the team to work shorter shifts and got through without a single redundancy. The result has been huge loyalty. Many staff have been with the company more than ten years, and some more than 20. They’ve been trained internally, too – interestingly a policy mirrored by their accountants, Goldwyns.

“We started in 1987 and didn’t take anything out of the company as a lump sum until 2001,” says Maureen. Everything they made until then was reinvested in the business. Even now, if someone suggests buying a replacement piece of equipment that wasn’t part of the planned programme, Maureen quizzes the team on whether the existing kit can be repaired and asks: “If we buy that, where is the guarantee of business to make it worthwhile?”

She says: “When you look at machines that are £95k each I always question anything not in our planned renewals programme. Yet our business is highly automated and you can run the machines all day so if the business is there to justify investment, we invest.”

How does a UK injection mouldings firm compete with what is on offer from China? Ed Edwards has first-hand knowledge about this as he was hired to oversee quality control for a company in China.

He says: “I spent time working in China overseeing mould tools. They have no quality control. Price is everything. Sometimes, the first container-load delivered is fine... but all too often, the next load is poor, and the next.

“They are good workers but without honesty, integrity and proper training, they can’t do a good job. For the kinds of precision tasks that we do, they just can’t compete”.

He tells stories about Chinese firms pulling the wool over his eyes with faux production lines adorned with staff but no products. By contrast, what you see in Essex is what you get and customers are welcome to see the work in progress.

The longevity of careers with the company is a strong feature. Staff include Paul, now MD, who joined in 1988; two people – Jon and Lee - who joined the company straight from school, now in charge of production in their mid 30s; office worker Heather, who has worked there for more than 20 years; and David, the tool room manager, who began as an apprentice with the firm.

Similarly, they’ve stuck with their accountants over many years. Maureen concludes: “Goldwyns’ advice has always been sound. Arthur Millman, a director at Goldwyns, has been instrumental in setting up pension and trust funds for us, and handling valuations and shares. He is very proactive. He visits the firm so he understands what we do. We trust Goldwyns implicitly”.

Running a business has, for Maureen and Ed Edwards, never been all about making money. “It was about making our own decisions and running our own lives. We manufacture. We guarantee a million shots.

“A customer can come to us and say I’ve got this idea – can you help me get it into the market? And we take it through from start to finish. Customers often just drop in - they’ve become friends. We have a close relationship with our customers, who appreciate the integrity of how we work. This has been reciprocated. Only in two instances have we had any serious bad debts, with customers who haven’t had the same ethos. In thirty years, we don’t think that’s bad”.

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