Owning your performance

Union Industries, the Leeds-based employee-owned manufacturer, is on track for its most successful year since it was established in 1975, with its half-year report revealing it is set to turnover in excess of £7m in the 16/17 financial year. This smashes last year’s performance which was itself a record breaking year for the company. This represents an increase of just over 30% compared to the previous year.

Pre-tax profits are up by a shade over 133 per cent compared to the same period in 2015 and it continues to experience growth in demand for its high-quality products, which are used in a number of sectors including food manufacturing, logistics, defence and pharmaceutical. Two years ago, Union Industries made the transition into becoming an employee-owned company after its founders, Paul and Isobel Schofield, sold their majority shares to the Union Industries Employee Ownership Trust.

Under its Employee Ownership scheme, every member of staff at Union Industries was awarded an equal share of the business; new starters who join are also given shares after 12 months of employment.

Sales director Alan Hirst says: “It is great to be an employee-owned business, Government statistics say employee-owned businesses perform better than average.”
While the ownership model is key for Union, the company has a number of other cards up its sleeve. The surge in orders has been in part attributed to the success of Union’s Lifetime Warranty scheme, which is included as standard on most doors sold and provides an extensive guarantee as well as a visit from Union’s highly trained technicians when required. So is Union’s business model now weight entirely towards service?

Alan explains: “The Lifetime Warranty scheme works very well, but doors are not loss leaders, we are about the product first and foremost, But we can do the service very well, and we want to make sure the doors work optimally after all these doors are built for the customer, designed to the millimetre, service goes hand in hand with the product quality.

“We aim to be on site and affect repair within 24 hours, sometimes quicker. Sometimes clients have European doors and it can take weeks for parts to come.”
Union counts blue chips, such as Jaguar Land Rover and Lidl, among its customers.

“They’ve learned it’s better to pay more for better products and good aftersales service,” says Alan. “Trucks get hit from time to time, can’t afford to have freezer door out of action.”

The manufacturer built upon its financial success by recently securing the Innovation of the Year Award at the annual UK Employee Ownership Awards for making its fast acting freezer Eiger Door into an ‘intelligent’ door by using a device to reduce energy and so reduce running costs, which is very important for Union’s ‘blue-chip’ customers. This innovative idea was drawn from Union’s ‘Eureka Bath’, which encourages staff to submit suggestions to improve the business and products. And so the ‘Intelligent Eiger Door’ was launched.

From its factory based in West Yorkshire, Union manufactures a range of industrial products, including their market-leading range of High Speed Industrial Doors that they proudly claim are the most reliable doors in the world. These fast acting doors are installed in distribution centres, warehouses, factories and storage facilities to improve logistics and help maintain environmental conditions for discerning companies across the UK and Europe.

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