Sewtec celebrates super successful 2019

We are hugely proud of what Sewtec has achieved in 2019. To thank and congratulate all our people, here is a round-up of our key achievements.

Impressive growth

In July, after the end of our 2018-19 financial year, we announced that our turnover had nearly doubled to £28m, with EBIDTA reaching £9m.

This saw us all but achieve our five-year plan of reaching £32m turnover within just 14 months – an outstanding achievement down to the hard work of everyone in our team. Our new ambitious growth plan is to be a £50m business by 2023.

People and promotions

In the last 12 months, we’ve also welcomed a staggering 47 new recruits into the business, taking us up to 129 permanent employees. That’s an increase of more than 50 per cent in our total headcount.

Of these, 15 were employee referrals, which we’ve been pleased to honour through our incentive scheme to the tune of £14,000.

Four of our new starters are also apprentices, bringing our total apprentices to eight. We’re proud to be leading the way in non-engineering apprenticeships too, with apprentices in HR, finance and IT roles. Hard-working people from all walks of life are welcome in every part of our business.

Media and award recognition

Sewtec’s profile was turbo-boosted in 2019. We’ve been featured in more than 130 articles in regional and trade media, from news on new hires and charity donations to machine installations.

We’re also very proud to have won a total of eight major awards this year, as well as being shortlisted for nine others. In case you missed it, these included being named national winner of the digital technology award at the European Business Awards, winning the international trade award at the Business Masters and the digital engineering and technology award at the Insider Made In Yorkshire awards.

Our managing director, Mark Cook, also picked up recognition for his leadership achievements, being named business leader of the year at the Yorkshire Post Excellence in Business Awards.

Community and society

In July, Sewtec was ranked among the top four per cent of the world’s most sustainable automation companies by EcoVadis, which surveys 55,000 companies in 155 countries. We’ve invested significant time and resource into environmentally friendly processes and automation systems, so it was very rewarding to achieve our gold CSR rating.

Closer to home, our charitable work across West Yorkshire continued throughout the year. This includes a recent £1,800 donation to two Wakefield charities, Star Bereavement Support Service and Community Awareness Programme. Our local community is very important to us and we’re proud to be part of it.

Plenty for 2020

The best is yet to come. As we look forward to more successful years of growth, the time is right for Sewtec to expand into a larger, modern facility.

In November, we revealed we will be relocating to a 75,000 sq ft facility in Wakefield’s Silkwood Park. The facility is more than twice the size of our existing one in Dewsbury and will create more than 70 jobs over the next three years.

We’re set to move in by March 2020, so what better time to consider or recommend a career at Sewtec and view our vacancies.

The Sewtec team is very pleased with the company’s performance this year and we look forward to more successes to come in 2020 and beyond.