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SOLENT SME GROWTH


TM


Two decades of growth for successful technology group


A family-owned technology group based in Hampshire is striving to ensure Britain remains a global leader in the world of electronics. Along with exporting one-third of its cutting-edge products to technology giants Japan, Germany, China, America and the Far East it also supports British industry by providing the expertise to get its innovative products off the drawing board and into production writes Tracy Nichol


Headquartered in Fordingbridge, Larasian has an annual turnover of more than £15 million and is ranked 98 in The Business Magazine's SME Growth 100 Index. Even during recession, the company has never seen a drop in profits – averaging growth of between five to 10% for two decades. Larasian is the parent company of Lascar Electronics and Corintech. Together these companies are at the forefront of electronic product design and manufacture.


Group CEO Rod Piwowarski attributed its success to a strategy of low-risk, stable, organic growth and shrewd investment in a firm asset base. The group owns properties worldwide, including 1,200 m2 of office space in Hong Kong, and actively maintain a broad customer base across a huge range of sectors from medical and pharmaceutical to defence. It is also committed to supporting UK engineering.


This ethos, says Piwowarski, has been instilled through the leadership of joint shareholders Brian and Glynis Currie. The husband and wife team founded Lascar from their garage in 1976, going on to buy Corintech in 1985. The group also includes some smaller companies and is now run on their behalf by a team of nine directors and has 150 staff worldwide.


“We specialise in high-quality, high-reliability industrial products rather than churning out here-today, gone-tomorrow consumer products,” said Piwowarski, who joined the group as an engineer 23 years ago. But he insists being cautious does not mean missing opportunities. “We constantly invest in services and equipment to keep up with technology and maintain our


competitive edge.” Corintech recently invested £300,000 in a new production facility at Fordingbridge while Lascar invested £750,000 in a new operations centre at Salisbury as part of a five-year growth plan. Together they spend around £1 million annually on R&D.


The sister companies are divided into two main areas: Corintech, headquartered at Fordingbridge with manufacturing facilities in the UK and Hong Kong, deals predominantly in custom manufacturing on a sub-contract basis and continued development of its own range of Wifi-based sensors and cloud-based monitoring system. Lascar develops its own products from its Salisbury head office and sites in the United States and Hong Kong.


Lascar is a world leader in the technology of environmental data logging devices. These measure anything from temperature, humidity, voltage, carbon monoxide and events, such as footfall. Applications are vast and include measuring South American bat cave conditions to museum artefact storage facilities although more typically they are used to monitor food and medical storage environments. It also produces display screens, originally LCD panel meters and most recently ‘PanelPilot' which incorporates intuitive design software enabling end users to easily personalise a touch-screen graphic interface.


While Lascar is putting the UK on the map with its own devices Corintech has created a business model to support other UK companies in the development and production of world-class electronic products. “Our aim is to support


Rod Piwowarski, group CEO of Larasian


the traditional British reserve of developing a product and taking risks,” said Piwowarski. The company invests its own engineering time to take the product from concept to manufacture quickly and at a fraction of the cost for the customer. He added: “It is likely we will not profit during the development stage but in return we produce a long-term, stable product and support a UK tradition of engineering and development.”


Piwowarski predicts Larasian could double in size and see turnover at £35m over the next decade but says the biggest barrier to growth is a “chronic shortage” of UK engineers. He said: “We could easily employ another 10 engineers tomorrow. We have a large product road map for future growth but for each one we implement we have 10 more waiting to be designed.”


It is a predicament Piwowarski is trying to resolve. Not easy when the UK produces just 40,000 engineers annually compared with China's 1.3m, India's 1m and 100,000 in France. The group currently employs 25 engineers in the UK and offers incentives such as subsidised accommodation, a holiday home and sabbatical scheme. But Piwowarski said the company now needed to do something radical and is reluctantly considering opening a development centre in China or the Far East. “This country has a rich engineering heritage. We produce the best engineers, with flare and passion but the sad thing is we are not training enough. Our leaders do not seem to be taking the issue seriously, I don't believe they appreciate the fundamental importance of the industry in adding value and creating wealth.”


businessmag.co.uk


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – SOLENT & SOUTH COAST – JULY/AUGUST 2016


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