Kentish Express Ashford & District
‘Thefts threatened the future of my business’
An 85-year-old family business made staff redundant and cut hours as it struggled to stay afloat while a member of staff stole £240,000 from under her colleagues’ noses.
The owner of Ashford-based Emmerich (Berlon) Ltd said the actions of Elaine Negus, could have led to the demise of the company founded by her grandfather in 1932.
S a mant h a E mmer i c h described the shock felt by her and her colleagues as they discovered the deception carried out by their office manager over four years.
“I couldn’t believe it was her,” she said. “She was a really trusted member of the team.
“I felt outraged she had stolen from all of us. How could she treat us that way?
“I have always seen it as an injury to the company as a whole. She was sitting among us smiling and all the time she was putting people’s jobs at risk and threatening the existence of the company.”
Negus, of Baileys Field, Ashford, joined the company, which makes Emir workbenches, as an accounts assistant in 2005.
She was promoted later to office manager of its factory in Wotton Road on the Kingsnorth Industrial Estate in Ashford.
She left on good terms in 2014 but her stealing was revealed after a staff member questioned whether his pension contributions had been properly transferred.
“We discovered one slightly strange payment on the system and were able to trace it back,” said Ms Emmerich.
“It unfolded over a number of weeks and we were in shock as the amount totted up. We couldn’t believe it.”
Just as the scandal was coming to light, the company was forced to give all staff redundancy notices in September 2015 as it struggled to make ends meet.
Ms Emmerich, who took over the business from her late father in 2008, said: “For a company our size, £240,000 is a hell of a lot of money.
“It has always been quite an up-and-down business. Bench sales are difficult to predict.
“It definitely led to some periods of short-time working and some redundancy risks.
“It has also given us a bad picture of the company’s performance. That has been very bad for moral. She has done the company terrible damage. There’s no getting away from it.”
The firm, which has an annual turnover of less than £1 million and employs 10 people, has since stabilised and there are plans to diversify with spare capacity it has on its 40,000sq ft premises.
Emmerich (Berlon) originally began in Remscheid, Germany, in 1852 before Friedrich Wilhelm Emmerich, Samantha’s grandfather, established a UK operation in London in 1932.
A successful move to Ashford followed in 1966 under her father Bill.
Ms Emmerich said: “We have got new ideas and great plans. We are stable.
“If I was in a purely financial position and we had not been a family business – where as the owner you know the heritage and are in it for the long haul – I might have been looking for an exit strategy.
“In a family business you think ‘how can we weather this period and turn it around’. Had it not been, she might have contributed to the demise of a company that has been in existence since the 1930s.”