Techbelt is a real belter of a business

SIMON Sparkes set up belt fabrication company Techbelt as a sideline to run alongside his father’s engineering firm.

Now Techbelt is manufacturing conveyor belts, belt-welding equipment and adhesive tapes for customers in the UK and overseas.

Its products include PTFE – or Teflon – adhesive tape used to seal pipework, heat-resistant adhesive tape, conveyor belts, bag-sealing belts and materials such as oven liners, and silicone-coated glass cloth and equipment including beltwelders and irons.

He said: “I had been working in the PTFE fabric market for about eight years and it was time to make a change.

“I joined my father’s engineering business and after about three months took on a spare unit next door and decided to bring products in as a sideline.

“I started with an empty desk, a telephone and an empty warehouse and began making phone calls.

“It was slow for the first 12 months. In the early days I identified that none of our competitors were using the internet, so we put a good website together and that accelerated things.

“We got a lot more enquiries throughout the UK and overseas.”

In 12 years, the company has moved premises four times due to expansion and is now based in 16,000 sq ft premises at Shaw Lodge Mills in Halifax – a far cry from its starting point at Clare Mount in the town. It moved to Shaw Lodge Mills five years ago and moved into its current premises there 18 months ago.

It has since snaffled half of its original premises at Shaw Lodge Mills due to further growth..

Techbelt has 16 employees – eight in fabrication and manufacturing and four in sales, with others in accounts and marketing.

The company has clients ranging from major food production companies to one-person businesses. Said Simon: “Over the past year the exporting side has picked up.

“We export into Europe and further afield. It accounts for 42 per cent of our turnover and looks to be increasing.

“We have about an even split of exporters from Europe and from outside Europe.

“We have brought on more customers from outside Europe partly because of the exchange rate.

“It involves a lot more paperwork, but we want to expand and we have embraced that.

“The office staff went on a course on export documentation about six months ago to get our heads round it!”

Simon said he was confident about the firm’s prospects, despite the uncertainty surrounding Brexit.

“We have just invested in more equipment and we build our own equipment ourselves.

“We have projects in the pipeline to build additional welding equipment and we have a targeted approach to sales. We are also relaunching the website.

“We are in a niche market with only a few competitors,” he said. “There is a lot of demand out there.” BRIGHOUSE-based design and PR agency has launched a new social learning platform for Yorkshire Building Society Group (YBSG).

The Lenny Agency was asked to make it easier for all employees at YBSG to share stories and learn from each other by developing a private, mobile optimised, interactive online space for colleagues to share experiences.

The agency’s creative team designed, built and launched the bespoke internal social learning platform – called Ignite – before creating an internal marketing campaign to promote the new site across the business.

Lenny will continue to work closely with YBSG to maintain the platform and its functionality during its early days.

Craig Leonard, partner at the Lenny Agency, said: “The Ignite project has been a huge success; we hope everyone at YBSG can reap the benefits.

“After a soft launch of the platform to a few hundred employees, the response rate was so positive that the site welcomed over 2,000 users in its first quarter.

“We’re really proud to be part of such a positive project that aims to have a real impact on people’s worklife.”