You can have £225,000...
the word of the fast-growing company to the lucrative market.
Hemmels already has stateside customers. Just next week a client is flying in from California to visit the premises.
Hemmels customers are now based all around the world, and include wellknown celebrities and royals.
Every car that comes into them is carefully documented and as it’s stripped down the parts are allocated to boxes ready for renovation and refitting. New or repaired items are refitted once the body is stripped to bare metal, cleaned, renovated and repainted. Each process is audited and recorded and this is where the Neugeboren Process takes its name as a car is reborn or regenerated.
Apart from the apprentices, the craftsmen have spent a lifetime in the automotive trade and have been hand-picked for their skills in mechanical, bodywork, electrical and painting. “Quality before quantity is what we strive to achieve every time,” said Iain Wood.
“Some have come to us from businesses where they had to push out a number of jobs each day and the temptation was to cut corners to achieve targets, but that’s not the way we do things at Hemmels.”
Mr Sullivan also praises the firm’s retention rate, noting they have an extremely low turnover of staff.
“We are focusing on our apprenticeship scheme next year,” said Mr Sullivan.
“We are looking to double the number next year and have been working with Cardiff & Vale College.”
He notes that the skill and craft level to work on the cars is so high that it works best with training up the staff themselves. Mr Wood added the approaching Brexit did not worry them as they don’t carry huge parts stocks. However, they are the world’s largest buyer of Mercedes-Benz car parts.
“We import parts from Germany on a just-in-time principle but even if they are held up a few days at HM Customs that’s not a issue when a car takes a year to build.”
The quality of Hemmels workmanship has been recognised by Mercedes-Benz and Hemmels will supply a model for exhibition for them. Importantly, all regeneration models carry a 12-month full warranty.
After each rebuild every model is comprehensively road-tested by the Hemmels engineers to make sure it performs as it should before it’s signed off and the company’s own badge is added to the car.