Award-winner Ultra Furniture invests in workforce

The domestic furniture making company on the Pensnett Estate, Kingswinford, enjoyed a successful 2014, achieving £16m turnover.

Managing director Glenn Aston said that this year would see Ultra taking on apprentices for the first time and the launch of a new employee engagement programme for its 238-strong team.

Ultra's achievements saw it win both the manufacturer of the year and customer service awards in last year's Black Country Chamber of Commerce Awards. It was the first time the business had entered any kind of awards.

Ultra, which makes a range of chairs and settees for customers including DFS, Next, Marks & Spencer and Tesco, was formed out of a number of companies in the furniture market in 1986 and has grown to occupy 100,000 sq ft on the Pensnett Estate with all the manufacturing taking place on the site including milling and cutting, sewing and upholstery.

Last year also saw the doubling of the design and development department to 18.

Mr Aston said that Ultra was now in the process of taking on five apprentice upholsterers and four apprentice sewing machinists.

"Walsall College has come up with suitable courses and our training programme will be led by training company LEAD.

"We are investing in training with both the apprentices and the employee engagement programme," he explained.

Ultra will also be looking to grow orders from existing customers in the UK and move into exporting.

The company currently only sells abroad in Ireland and Benelux countries, but with the help of the Black Country Chamber of Commerce has just embarked on an exercise to look at how easy it would be to export further.

Mr Aston has been with Ultra since 1999, initially as finance director. He was part of a management buyout in 2005 and took over as MD in February last year.

One of his first steps was to strengthen the board of directors. It now includes production director Phil Bennett, who has been with Ultra since its start; design and development director, Dennis Milligan; finance director, Tim Yorke; sales director, Jim O'Donnell and commercial director, Andrew Matthew.

"We have now got the right team in place to deliver on our strategic plan and continue our growth," added Mr Aston.

He said there had been a considered push last year to drive forward both manufacturing and levels of customer service.

"Price continues to remain a driving factor in our industry so we strive to offer products that are highly commercial and excellent value for money, and we have backed this quality up with our philosophy towards customer service."

Ultra also exhibited last month at the January Furniture Show at the Birmingham NEC for the first time in eight years.

It saw the launch of new products across all of its brands and the launch of the 'Rachel Lane' collection, a new concept in living furniture which is a little bit quirkier than the norm; the 'Casual' range, being very modern, streamlined and trendy but also great value for money and the 'Chair Gallery', which has been put together to provide retailers with an alternative to importing chairs from the Far East and enable them to choose from a selection of brand new designs in a variety of fabrics with great lead times.