CM Insider
Ring Automotive, one of the UK’S leading lighting and automotive aftermarket suppliers, is investing more than £300,000 to expand its business in the UK and across Europe.
To reinforce its commitment to quality, Ring has launched a Future Technologies Unit (FTU) at its manufacturing base in Leeds. As one of few organisations in the UK with its own Iso:9001-accredited quality assurance facility, Ring has updated its testing equipment – including a new ICPMI8 Imaging Colorimeter camera from Usbased specialists Radiant Vision Systems, which measures up to 1m individual pixels of light to give superior accuracy when testing or calibrating light sources.
The FTU will allow the company to focus on emerging innovations in the automotive marketplace, with Bhavesh Mistry and Paul Shaw working as new product development managers. Charles Maltby, the technical and NPD director, says: “This investment is about reinforcing our commitment to quality. We could simply rely on third-party testing but, with the facilities that we have on-site, we are able to go one step further and carry out our own comparisons to give us unique insights into the durability of our range.”
In addition to this, Ring has opened a new European headquarters at Le Dome, part of the Roissypole complex of buildings at Roissy Charles de Gaulle International Airport in France, to build its profile outside of the UK. A team of 10 experts, speaking 12 languages, have been tasked with improving exports to countries including Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Ring already has a sales presence in 75 markets across the world and has opened new sales channels in 10 countries across Eastern Europe and the Middle East in the last three years.
Ring’s international business unit director, Gonzalo Vargas-zuniga Cruz, says: “Approximately a quarter of our sales can be attributed to exports, giving some indication of the opportunity that extending our presence across Europe represents. We know that our sales channels and performance across these markets has significantly improved over recent years and this investment will further reinforce our commitment as we build our portfolio of customers.”