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GreenTech tops the Fast Track
A High Wycombe company that topped the last Fast Track 100 league table – which ranks Britain’s 100 private companies with the fastest-growing sales over their latest three years’ accounts – has again proved to be the top Thames Valley company in the latest listing.
GreenTech Distribution was set up by co-founder and chief executive Richard Crawley in 2010 when RP Europe, a telecoms distributor he owned, began to receive requests to recycle mobile handsets.
The company has since ridden the boom in smartphones and now – with just a fairly small staff of 25 – offers a range of services to network operators, insurers and distributors such as EE and Asurion. These include repairing and reselling faulty and unwanted handsets, recycling components and wiping data. The firm also has a partnership with Samsung to offer an in-house repair service in shops.
Sales grew to £64.2 million in 2016, representing an average 143% increase over three years, gaining the company ninth place nationally.
The Thatcham-based online phone retailer Mobile Phones Direct was the region’s second most successful company with sales up an average of 85% (no.35 in the UK). Founded by chairman Karl Borges in 2011, after starting with a bricks-and-mortar shop of the same name, it is now led by chief executive Ben Branson.
The company sells mobile phone accessories, handsets from manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung and Sony, and contracts from providers EE, Vodafone and Talkmobile. It has invested heavily in its customer service processes
over the past year, helping revenues to £79.3m in 2016.
Third place in the region went to Aquinna Homes, founded by Stephen Brazier at Beaconsfield in 2005 after a career with large developers including Bovis Homes.
The housebuilder focuses on houses for aspirational families in the commutable suburbs around London and the South East, and prides itself on offering high- specification homes which helps it attract high prices.
The recovery in the housing market helped sales reach £18.8m in 2015 (53rd
in the UK
table) and they are forecast to rise 20% this year.
Husband-and-wife team Andy and Pranee Laurillard set up the Thai restaurant business Giggling Squid (57th
in UK) at Guildford in
2008, now offering what it calls “Thai tapas” in more than 17 cities across southern England and the Midlands.
To help fund expansion it secured £6.4m in 2015 from BGF for a minority stake and sales expanded to £11.8m in 2016, with plans to open a further 10 sites this year.
Another Guildford business at 65th
was Diamond Logistics,
which provides customers with a nationwide network of delivery and storage options, serving blue-chip corporations, small businesses and online shopfronts alike.
The company is led by chief executive Kate Lester who started the firm in 1992 when aged just 20. In 2012 she franchised the business and now works with a network of 25 across the UK – resulting in sales quadrupling in the past three years to £6.5m.
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – FEBRUARY 2017 Audley Retirement (73rd ) is a
Staines-based business that specialises in luxury retirement villages with homes selling for an average of £500,000, although the company also offers more affordable properties through its sister brand Mayfield Villages launched last April. Audley now has 14 locations across England and sales reached £43.5m in 2015.
Reading-based Anesco (78th )
claims it has saved 1.25m tons of carbon emissions through installing and maintaining renewable energy equipment
such as solar panels and heat pumps. Sales rose to £213.7m last year with profits of £24.6m, the highest in the league table, and it has now diversified into other areas from street lighting to energy storage.
Cennox (92nd ) was founded at
Camberley in 2004 by former Travelex director Clive Nation to provide anti-fraud and security devices for cash machines around the world. In 2016 it acquired Bankers Exchange, a cash machine parts business based in Atlanta, helping the latest sales figure to £31m.
The annual table is compiled by Oxford-based Fast Track and published in The Sunday Times.
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