The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Export markets are city tech firm’s ‘lifeblood’
Stoneridge Electronics in ‘good health’ as it marks its 70th anniversary
Exporting is the lifeblood of Stoneridge Electronics, which has a long history in Dundee.
It achieved 85% of its revenues last year from 42 different countries.
Stoneridge Electronics’ aftermarket HQ in the Scottish city currently has around 70 employees.
The main business is tachographs and related products and services.
The company is part of US group Stoneridge Inc, a designer and manufacturer of electrical and electronic components, modules and systems for a variety of vehicle markets.
The roots of the Dundee operation go back 70 years.
It started out in 1948 as Veeder-root, manufacturing cash-sales counters for petrol pumps.
Then, in 1975, the company launched its first mechanical tachograph for heavy goods vehicles, to tap into a growing European marketplace.
The firm became TVI Europe in 1993, and then part of Stoneridge Electronics following its acquisition by Stoneridge in 1999.
Amanda Robertson, managing director — aftermarket for Stoneridge Electronics, said the Dundee facility has constantly adapted to technology and market changes.
Amanda, who hails from St Andrews, said: “Realising that any future as a manufacturing site would be shortlived due to outsourcing to lower-cost countries, the aftermarket business has transitioned in the past 12 years into a development and sales/service led organisation.
“Whilst there is still some low-volume manufacturing of older-style tachographs in Dundee, the focus is now on innovating and supporting products for our customer base of workshops and fleet operators throughout Europe and beyond.
“Technology has moved on in the last 10 years, with tachograph data now being regularly remotely downloaded ‘over the air’ and analysed ‘in the cloud’.
“The Stoneridge aftermarket business has grown by 40% in revenue in the past two years and increased its profitability to a record year in 2017.
“This has been down to aligning resources to current requirements, capitalising on a retrofit opportunity in Turkey and launching a new product for US legislation.
“The aftermarket HQ in Dundee has a wide range of capabilities including operations/logistics, design and development, and sales and marketing.
“The multilingual customer support team offer telephone and online support to customers in seven different languages.”
Amanda said that, looking to the future, the business plans to continue increasing its tachograph market share, introducing new products and services to its existing customer base as well as developing new markets.
She added: “A key exciting opportunity is the change to ‘smart’ tachographs from June 2019, which the EU Commission hopes will reduce the administrative process and tampering of current digital tachographs.
“The Stoneridge aftermarket team is busy preparing all its existing products and software to be able to work with these new tachographs, as well as developing new tools and services which the market will require.
“The company looks in good health for being 70 years old.”