European Circuits have achieved another good performance over their most recent financial year which ended June 2013. With sales up 14% on the previous year and an order intake showing a 20% increase, the results are encouraging in what has been another challenging trading year amidst difficult economic conditions.
The success in part has been due to a significant increase in overseas activity. 12 months ago just under 1% of ECL’s turnover was attributable to non-UK customers. In the year just ended around 6% of their sales was exported.
“It’s very pleasing to see a significant increase in our overseas business” said Sales Director Jim Broom, “ but what’s particularly encouraging is the breadth of current interest right across Europe and beyond. In the past year we have seen enquiries from potential customers in 20 different countries and have begun trading with 14 of them. This has been achieved with minimal focused resource on export potential. It would certainly suggest that there is still significant export business potential for UK based manufacturing companies within the electronics market. We certainly intend to build on this position.”
Amongst the most recent additions to their international order book have been customers from Italy, Germany, Sweden and Pakistan. It is perhaps the not insignificant contract from Pakistan that represents the most unexpected new market potential.
Horizon Technical Services, who previously had contracted out their electronics manufacturing needs to the Far East, were looking for improvements in service, quality and flexibility. ECL beat off competition from several other companies within the UK and beyond to secure the initial contract. It’s anticipated the full requirements could be worth in excess of £250k.
Horizon who employ around 200 people in Islamabad produce communication equipment. The contract awarded to ECL consists of 6 different assemblies which make up a data verification system for the banking industry. Two engineers from Horizon recently spent a week at ECL’s manufacturing plant in Clydebank near Glasgow to begin successful acceptance testing on the various electronic assemblies. Broom commented, “We hope this will be the catalyst for other business potential not only with Horizon but with other companies in South Asia and the Middle East.”
But it’s not just on the international front that ECL has been busy attracting new customers. With continuing difficulties within the UK economy it has been another challenging year on the domestic market. “Whilst many of our existing customers have enjoyed reasonable growth this year inevitably there some who have struggled in the current economic climate”, said Business Development Manager Philip Briscoe. “However the addition of 18 new customers over the past financial year has more than filled the gaps and contributed to our growth for this year and hopefully next. We set out at the start of the year with a target of increasing our enquiry rate by 15% and actually achieved an increase of over 21%.” This success can partly be attributed to a change in our marketing strategy”
A major contributing factor to this increased enquiry and sales activity may well be ECLs decision to adopt social media into their marketing strategy. Jim Broom explains, “We appointed Neil Johnston to the position of Marketing Researcher about 18 months ago, initially to generate potential leads from traditional marketing techniques. However over the last 12 months in particular, Neil and Philip have embarked on a variety of social media activities to further our market awareness and drive more leads through our website which we endeavour to update on a regular basis. We have hard evidence of increased enquiries through our efforts on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and have even had orders as a direct result of twitter conversations.”
Other factors have undoubtedly contributed to the companies continued success, not least their commitment to retain an in-house bare PCB manufacturing facility. This has helped their competitiveness and their ability to offer short lead times helping their customers to get to market faster.
Continued investment in people and equipment has also been instrumental with new BGA rework and AOI systems amongst this past year’s acquisitions.
ECL is confident that all the work being done on home and international fronts will facilitate another year of ambitious growth.
