It is with great pleasure that I announce the appointment of John Biggin as Managing Director from the 1st January 2002. John has been with the company for over four years and has progressively worked closer with me to the point where I am happy to let him have the steering wheel! I will still be around as much as I was last year though so don’t rejoice too much!
2001 – what a good year we have had! All areas in the business performed well, some exceptionally so. I look forward to 2002 with great confidence.
We spent a lot of our earnings this year on improving our facilities:
Droitwich has had a new extension (almost finished!) which will treble it’s working area. Great job done by Jonathan Taylor and his team this year.
Walsall depot has moved into much larger premises – and filled them straight away! Well done Terry Retter and the team.
Coventry depot has relocated to a smaller shop which has allowed the depot to give a greater contribution to the central overhead. Well done all.
We have had some major repairs at West Bromwich – tarmacing the top sales yard and the service reception car park plus new entry and exit security gates; repairs to the workshop roof (ongoing into 2002) plus a new recovery trailer and a nice tractor unit for Mr Perrott! The accident repair centre got a new chassis heat tool together with a new jig along with a new floor jig to be installed in the New Year, trebling our jig capacity.
On top of all this, we replaced most of our van fleet where now most are no are older than 12 months. Also many cars were replaced too.
So, as you can see, we have invested vast sums back into the business – reflecting the confidence for 2002 and beyond.
May I just remind all of the following: as company policy, we do not allow any employee to accept gifts of any sort from suppliers at any time – even Christmas. We ask our suppliers to donate whatever they would give by way of a gift (the cash value) to our chosen charity. This year our charity is Acorns Children’s Hospice, who look after terminally ill children. They are really struggling at the moment with finances and we hope to give them £1,500 from our suppliers. I have agreed to personally match the suppliers’ figure myself thereby giving Acorns circa £3,000.
Have a wonderful happy Christmas and I will see you in the New Year.
Chris Kelly
Chairman
