Britain might not be the manufacturing behemoth it once was, but what it lacks in scale it certainly makes up for in expertise and innovation. GrowthBusiness tracks down a band of pioneering UK manufacturing players with exciting global prospects.

Fantas-Tak prospects at secretive dots maker
‘We want to grow sales to £10 million, then we might look at floating in five years’ time,’ enthuses Richard Turner, co-founder and managing director of Yorkshire manufacturer Fantas-Tak, an innovative maker and seller of revolutionary glue dots.

The company is a European market leader in this space, producing 100 million dots a month and exporting to 43 countries.

Based in Shipley, Fantas-Tak was formed after identifying a gap in the market for adhesive dots at home and abroad, and its individuality lies in its expertise in the chemical make-up of adhesives and its ability to mix and make its own adhesives in a way unknown to rivals.

You’ve probably come across Fantas-Tak products already without knowing it. Superdots – produced to customer specification using a secretive process at the group’s facility in Shipley – are a unique development in the hi-tech attachment of CDs, free samples and flyers to magazines, and can be used in a variety of industries from print finishers to contract packers. A key area for future growth stems from the fact that these clever glue dots are also suitable for use within food-related industries, since they are acid free and non-toxic.

Protecting innovation
‘We are very sensitive about people coming into the factory and all our staff are covered by confidentiality agreements,’ teases Turner. ‘But basically, our dots have a better bond, look and feel than rivals’, and also produce less grease stains because our adhesives are made with very low oil content.’

Turner is equally keen to point out that the company recently set up a retail arm, enabling it to sell its wares into the stationery, grocery, education and high street retail sectors, and supermarket clients are on their way.

‘We have an October year-end, and we’ll turn over £3.2 million this year, up from £2.2 million last year. For next year, we are forecasting £4.5 million, and crucially, our margins are rising due to cost savings and the implementation of some higher pricing,’ he boasts. Prospects at Fantas-Tak, which spurned an invitation to appear on BBC2’s Dragon’s Den, look to be nothing short of fantastic.


Practice makes perfect for clean power play
Another venture manufacturing a unique product is Voller Energy, which ‘will be the first fuel cell player to reach profitability’, according to chief executive Stephen Voller. The company, which floated on AIM with a £9.1 million funding in February, makes portable fuel cell systems used as battery chargers and mobile generators.

‘Flotation allowed us to move our operations from a small, 1,200-square-foot office to a new 5,000-square-foot facility,’ recounts Voller. ‘Where we are now is basically a bigger version of where we were, but we’ve been here for four years and economies of scale are becoming an intriguing factor for this business. The product becomes smaller, smarter and cheaper to make each time, with the components we are using also becoming cheaper as we use more and more of them.’

UK base helps learning curve
Voller’s manufacturing experiences have helped make improvements to successive generations of its VE100 portable fuel cell system, the latest of which was recently CE certified – the CE mark is the European Community’s official safety and environmental requirement stamp.

‘A question we are always asked is, why are we manufacturing here in the UK when we could be making our systems in India or China?’ says Voller. ‘Well, the answer is that the numbers we’re making just don’t warrant an international move at the moment. The volumes just don’t justify doing it 5,000 miles away.

‘Manufacturing here and then shipping out to distribution partners allows us to get feedback and make improvements to our systems. Fuel cells are unique products affected by all sorts of environmental issues like temperature, humidity and air pressure, and you can only learn so much in the lab.’

Interestingly, the latest VE100 is a quiet system that weighs only 9kg and yet produces 230 volts, equivalent to the power produced by a plug in the wall. The product will do its bit for a cleaner Earth, as it produces no toxic emissions, and its only output is pure water.

For the year to June 2006, analysts are forecasting pre-tax losses of £2.3 million on sales of only £994,000, ahead of a £2.25 million deficit from a top line £2.4 million the following year. For June 2008, however, Voller might well score first profits of £600,000 on £14.5 million sales. This is most certainly a manufacturing star to watch.