Strong export sales, particularly to the US and Ireland, have helped a major West Yorkshire engineering company boost its annual turnover to record levels.

For the financial year ending 1st December 2007, Otley-based Craftsman Tools posted a turnover of £6 million, an increase of 30 per cent on the previous year and well ahead of schedule. The company is at the forefront of work and toolholding technology, as well as supply chain services to the engineering sector, and operates a satellite office in Chicago, which trades as Chevin Tools.

Craftsman Tools managing director, Robert Johnson, said: “This is really positive news not just for the business but for the engineering sector as well. The main factors in our continuing success is that we are very focused on sales and marketing, and on providing first class customer service.

“We also invest heavily to keep up to date with in the latest technology, whether that be machinery for the shop floor or our IT systems, and we also look to employ the best people.

“Over the past year we have increased our employee numbers to 56, with five of those being apprentices. We also now have a dedicated member of staff to train up our apprentices, and we have recently invested £60,000 on a vertical machining centre and a CNC lathe specifically for them to begin their basic training on.”

Craftsman also enjoys strong export sales to Sweden, Germany, Singapore and the Netherlands, with some of its main customers being BAE Systems, Sandvik, Boeing and AO Smith Corporation.

One of the secrets of Craftsman’s success is the dividing up of the company into ‘cells,’ all named after rivers: Severn concentrates on toolholding products and rotating centres, 80 per cent of which are exported; Aire focuses on sub-contract machining, largely for the oil field sector; Delaware is responsible for workholding products; while North is responsible for development work.

The exception to the river names is Sulzer, which is permanently contracted to Leeds-based Sulzer Pumps UK.

Mr Johnson concluded: “One of the advantages of separating the company this way means that each cell has its own manager who acts as a single point of contact for respective customers. “We regard this as important for helping further develop long-standing business relationships, which in turn leads to maintaining overall quality, delivery and customer satisfaction.”