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Meech MD Celebrates 30 Years

Company News Friday, February 11, 2011: Meech International Ltd.

Meech International increased turnover during its 2010 financial year by more than 37 per cent compared to the previous year. Managing director Chris Francis has just completed 30 years at the helm of this successful UK manufacturer.

Chris Francis of Oxfordshire manufacturer Meech International has recently celebrated 30 years with the company, 29 of them as managing director, a position he took on when he was only 25 years old. During this period he has steered the growth of the company, turning it into an international player in a range of related technologies. Its success aboard - over 70 per cent of sales are exported - resulted in Meech being awarded The Queen’s Award for Enterprise: International Trade 2009.

“My grandfather, Joseph Meech, formed the company in 1907 and it became a very successful electrical engineering business, involved in high profile projects such as the Battersea power station and rewiring of Southampton docks after the Second World War,” says Chris Francis. “When I joined in 1980, having qualified as a chartered accountant, static control was responsible for less than 5 per cent of turnover.

“However, the following year we exhibited at the UK Interplas show, and even though all we had were some fairly rough-and-ready static control products, we received hundreds of enquires. It was really the start of the growth of our involvement in this technology. In 1988 we sold the electrical engineering side of the business, moved from London to modern premises in Witney and concentrated on producing pioneering static control solutions.

“Alongside this work, our R&D team began to develop web cleaning systems and equipment based upon air technology, designed to reduce energy consumption in a typical factory floor environment. These three areas continue to form the core of our products, although the recent launch of IonRinse, which provides significant energy saving when cleaning blown containers, bottles, cans, jars and pre-forms used in the food and beverage industries, has opened up a substantial new potential customer base.”

Meech has made some bold moves during the last ten years, with the result that it now has subsidiaries in the USA, China, Hungary and Belgium, the latter overseeing sales in several major European markets. A well established network of distributors gives Meech a presence in a further 50 countries.

“During the first quarter of 2011 we will announce details of a joint venture in India, and we expect to make further ‘partnership’ announcements during the next 18 months, which will reinforce our policy of providing close support to customers around the world. With cleanliness becoming increasingly critical in a range of manufacturing processes, and with the growth in areas such as nano technology and RFID, we believe the solutions offered by Meech will appeal to an ever wider audience,” says Chris Francis.