Keeping the wheels of industry turning
Shelley’s rescue of Dymag between 2009 and 2011 kept its four key production staff together and the company has been growing ever since.
“The gang of four came back to help get the company started again, and we then built the team around them,” he explains.
The AMSCI investment and a partnership with the National Composites Centre, which helped to carry out research into significantly reducing manufacturing process cycle times of carbon wheels, led to rapid growth in the last 12 months and Dymag’s current workforce at its Chippenham base is up to 22.
“We’ve just been going through a headcount plan and this time next year we’re planning to grow by a factor of 10,” says Shelley. “There’s a big ramp up starting in the first quarter of 2017 and really kicking in through quarter two and three and four, [and] our monthly sales should be getting on for ten times what they are now.”
That would lead to a staffing level in the region of 45 people, which would be split up with 75 per cent of them working on OEM wheel designs, 15-20 per cent on aftermarket products, and the rest handling a mixture of motorcycle designs and new-for-2018 projects.