ECCO Safety Group launch their new European manufacturing facility headquarters in Leeds
From their European Headquarters in Leeds, UK, ECCO Safety Group (ESG) are now poised to extend their market penetration across Europe and the UK. HUB-4 were invited to the ESG press event on April 17th to meet the management team, learn more about the business and take a good look at the recently opened manufacturing facility.
Bought by Berwind in 2007, a private equity company established in 1886 and based in Philadelphia, USA, ESG have the long-term backing of a multi-billion dollar 5th generation family owned business who operate 70 manufacturing plants and offices in 100 locations on five different continents. This long-term commitment to ESG means that they are focussed on long-term capital appreciation and extremely high quality product development. The business has seen many tactical acquisitions over the last few years including Premier Hazard, Britax, Preco, Vision Alert, Nova, Delta Design, PSE Amber and Hazard Systems, and now ESG has brought all that knowledge and expertise together to move forward with its two key brands, ECCO and Code 3. By 2020 all existing product will see this new branding re-alignment.
Code 3 manufacture and supply LED emergency vehicle lighting systems and sirens across the globe to police, fire and EMS services and ECCO manufacture and supply LED ‘amber‘ vehicle safety lighting and reversing systems across agriculture, airports, bus and coach, commercial vehicle, recovery, utilities, mining, construction and material handling industries. The products that make up the portfolio for ECCO include beacons, camera systems, directional LED’s, interior lighting, lightbars, minibars, reversing alarms, safety directors, utility bars and work-lamps.
We talked with Enrico Vassallo, Managing Director of ESG EMEA who told us about ESG “Our commitment here at ECCO is to provide the best safety system protection for our customers by providing the best working environment and manufacturing systems for our employees along with cutting edge research and development in our products. We want to provide a total 360˚ solution which encompasses all of our high quality and proven product range. We have 8 plants globally with our Leeds and Melbourne facilities being the latest additions to that portfolio. We have a total of 400,000 sq ft global manufacturing and logistics space, 700 staff and last year we turned over $230m US dollars, with a split of 50% to the USA, 35% to EMEA and 15% to Asia Pacific.”
“We have invested £2.8m in our new facility in Leeds and now employ 117 people running two shifts each day to cover a 16hr manufacturing period. Our current output is 15,000 units per day but we have the ability to increase this to 45,000 units per day as demand grows.”
Enrico talked further about their customer base and its importance “We have a 3,000 strong dealer network around the world selling and installing our products and we also put a lot of importance on our relationships with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Currently we supply around 500 OEM’s including companies like JCB, Caterpillar and CNH (CASE and New Holland) and although these clients are global we make sure that we work with them individually in each country to provide the correct products for their region. We work very hard to innovate new products for our clients and currently hold over 170 trademarks and 151 design patents.”
“In terms of growth we are poised to expand our market share across the EMEA region with the capability that this new European manufacturing facility gives us. Over the next 2-5 years the expected safety systems market size globally is going to expand to around $2bn and we are in an ideal situation with manufacturing plants spread across the world to take advantage of this increase. Here in Europe the UK currently accounts for 42% of sales with Germany at 18% and France at 15%, so again we have huge potential for growth in the German, French and southern European markets.”
Manufacturing Facility Tour
The press were then given a complete guided tour of the design and manufacturing area hosted by David Noble, Production Manager, Phil Stothard, Logistics Manager and Richard Nadin, European Engineering Director. Richard started by talking about engineering “We have 20 engineers based here in the UK across the disciplines of CAD, Test, Design and Project Management. Our CAD engineers look after all the solid works drawings, the CAD system and assembling structure for production. Our test team look after all the elements of the test from approvals and submissions through to environmental, photometric and EMC testing. Our design team is split into disciplines of electronics, industrial design, mechanical and firmware engineering. Project management is tasked with looking after all projects with effective timescales and task management.”
David Noble talked to us about the manufacturing floor “We produce over £51m of product from this facility and our people are our most important investment in our business, recently attaining ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 which now allows us to supply directly into the automotive industry. The manufacturing area is made up of 39 individual work station cells that are each set up to produce a specific product. All cells are fully digitized meaning that all assembly and technical data is viewed by the operator on-screen and allows for instant updates of the production process. A system of notification lights above each cell also indicates if there is an issue and alerts another team member to action. Toolbox talks are also carried out to communicate any quality faults or updates to the whole team and then pushed out to each cell on-screen. The factory is divided into four main production areas, beacons, lightbars, lamps, and Code 3 light bars with sub-assembly areas feeding into these main production cells.”
Phil Stothard, Logistics Manager added “We have invested heavily in a state of the art warehousing system which includes wire guided vehicles for picking parts with a fully integrated bar code system for accurate stock management and tracking through the entire production process. First-off testing has also been implemented recently where every product, before it goes into manufacture, is fully tested to ensure that the correct systems are in place, the correct parts are available, and the correct assembly techniques are used.”
For more information on ESG and the ECCO range of products please visit www.eccoesg.co.uk