PP has ‘major year’

PP Control & Automation, which supplies electrical control systems, cable harnesses and sub-contract manufacturing solutions to many machinery builders, turned 50 years-old in September and marked the occasion by securing £2 million of new contracts.

Located in a 55,000sqft facility in Cheslyn Hay, the company enjoyed a major surge in demand for its strategic outsourcing services, with interest coming as far away as Iceland.

It is a far cry from when the business was formed by chairman David Fox (image right), operating from a 1,200sqft unit in Walsall with just a handful of staff and supplying small volume electrical controls and distribution equipment.

Tony Hague (image left), managing director of PP Control & Automation, said: “This year has been a major year for us, not just in terms of our ‘big birthday’, but also in terms of laying the foundations for the next five decades.

“We now have a five-year plan of taking turnover from £22 million in 2017 to £40 million in 2022 and the £1 million factory extension now gives us the additional space and world class logistics/materials department to help us achieve that.”

David Fox started PP Control & Automation after spotting an opportunity to provide a more professional panel building service to the region’s hospitals and building companies. It was originally just him, his wife doing the books in her spare time and a close band of friends who came with him. The first employee was Frank Cox, who still works at the business today.

Fox said: “This was really the first example of where we started to look at supplying the big OEMs, rather than lots of small local opportunities. It really gathered pace in the mid 90s, when we landed a contract to help Mazak build machine tools…this was the major transformation point for PP and I’m proud to say we still supply the Japanese manufacturer today.

“Other major milestones on our journey include the appointments of Tony Hague and the current chief technical & information officer Ian Knight, the opening of our training school in 2000 to support six sigma implementation and the introduction of ‘Route 6’ - an internally branded Continuous Improvement programme to drive productivity in 2015.”

He concluded: “Turning 50 is a great achievement for the company and we have to say a big thank you to our staff for their hard work, their commitment and their desire to be the best in the business.”