Quality pays off for HME Technology

A Midlands-based educational company is celebrating after winning a string of new orders from both home and abroad.

HME Technology, based at Saxon Park in Bromsgrove, believes the quality of its products and its flexibility in shaping each project has proved a major factor in its success.

Director Martyn Hale said: “Our business is the leading supplier and installer of design and technology and science equipment for schools.

“It remains a difficult economic climate in the UK yet our hard work is paying off. And our efforts to target markets abroad have also produced some significant results.”

HME Technology’s range include forges, brazing hearths, furnaces, welding tables, fume extraction systems, kilns, woodworking equipment, wood dust extraction systems, metal finishing and CNC machines. It also supplies fume cupboards and ventilation systems for science departments.

It manufactures some itself and buys in others from leading brands.

It recently won a major contract in Abu Dhabi – a £230,000 order from ALDAR Properties as part of a massive new school construction there.

And it is working with Sangwin Educational Furniture and construction group Willmott Dixon on the Hope Academy scheme in Newton-le-Willows, Lancashire, due to complete later this year.

And these have been topped off with a £288,000 flagship contract to supply and install design and technology equipment for Landau Forte Academy, Tamworth.

The Academy opened in existing buildings of the former Woodhouse Business and Enterprise College in September last year and will move to new purpose built accommodation for 960 11-16 year olds at Amington and 860 16-19 year olds on a town centre site adjacent to Queen Elizabeth Mercian School and South Staffordshire College.

Due to open this September at a cost of £35 million, the new Landau Forte Academy will offer dual specialisms in science and business enterprise.

It is operated by Landau Forte Charitable Trust, founded by Martin Landau and the Forte family around 20 years ago. By 2012 it expects to be educating almost 3,000 students across its academies.

Mr Hale said: “We were particularly pleased to have won the contract because this academy was established to bring together the worlds of business, industry and education in a uniquely productive partnership to secure the highest quality education.

“Given our interest in all three sectors and our own manufacturing expertise it was a particularly apposite win.

“And, given our passion for education, we felt a bond with the Landau Forte style which seeks to be distinctive, high quality and critically releases the potential of each student enabling them both individually and collectively to be the best that they can be.”

Mr Hale said a number of further contracts were in the pipeline.

He added: “We are in the frame for a number of big projects and that is very encouraging.

“Quality matters and it is also vitally important that you are prepared to go the extra mile to satisfy every aspect of the customer’s requirements.

“It is this strategic vision and attention to detail which is paying off.”