BUSINESS TYPE:	FOOD SAFETY AND WEIGHT CHECKING TECHNOLOGY
LOCATION:	NORTHAMPTONSHIRE
INVESTMENT ON COMPLETION:	£20,000

Every food processing line must, by law, have a system for detecting ‘alien’ presences in the finished packages. Our client, who has been in the industry for over 20 years, spotted an opportunity to provide replacement detector units at far lower prices than the OEM’s.

He set himself up as a sole trader, using his own funds, but found that product development & testing took longer, and cost more than expected. He also realised that his skills were engineering related, and that he needed help with the general management of the business. He approached Beer & Young with a request that we help him in both areas. At the time he estimated that he needed £150,000 to complete development and to carry out the necessary marketing.

Shortly after we became involved our client announced that he had started work on a new, software-based, product that would collate and analyse data from a series of detectors. This has always been carried out up till now as a paper-based exercise. As such records have to be stared for 7 years the new product will bring enormous savings on both labour and storage costs.

The arrival of this new product dramatically changed the profile of the borrowing requirement and the growth potential of the business. Additional funding was however still required. We were able to find an investor who could provide both the capital and the necessary management expertise. A new Limited company has been registered and it started trading at the beginning of January 2008. One month later, product development is well advanced and they are already confidently predicting a turnover of £300,000 with a profit of £100,000 in their first year. These figures are based on sales into the UK in which there are some 11000 processing lines. This however is only a small fraction of the market available in the USA and Europe, markets that they will develop in the future.

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