News Spokespeople - Broomfield & Alexander Chartered Accountants : New Business Starts

Grant helps create 18 jobs for Cardiff

A successful South Wales business which has cracked the printers’ Holy Grail of producing highly personalised products in short runs with a lightening turnaround is creating 18 new jobs as part of an £450,000 investment programme.

MLM Supplies, which already employs 11 people at its base in Wentloog, Cardiff, has made the investment after it was awarded a Regional Selective Assistance Grant from the Welsh Assembly Government, and funding from Finance Wales.

Professional advisors Broomfield & Alexander, which planned and presented the case for the funding, said MLM was a prime example of how the Welsh economy could expand through public money assisting a successful company to get to the next stage of its growth.

MLM is investing in new high-tech machinery to enable its rapid growth to continue, and to further refine a service which sees customers requirements met in days rather than the usual timescale of a few weeks.

Grant helps create 18 jobs for Cardiff General manager Howard Philpott explained that the business model adopted by MLM enabled it to be efficient in its marketing and in its delivery of products.

“You can have any amount of mission statements for a company, but at the end of the day, at MLM we are passionate about our service and our value,” he said.

“Our customers are franchise operators who need access to a range of personalised items – business cards, letter heads, stationery and so on – but in relatively small quantities.

“We have invested in equipment which allows us to deal with small quantity runs of items including books, and because we generate high numbers of orders, we can really score on service and value.

“The phone rarely rings here, because we take our orders over the internet from all over the UK via password-protected sites promoted for us by franchise groups we deal with - so our sales costs are very low.”

Broomfield & Alexander director Seamus Gates said Wales was fortunate to have support from the Welsh Assembly Government in the form of grants such as RSA.

“MLM is an example of a typical candidate for these grants – a company which has achieved its first phase of growth and is looking to expand,” he said.

“The business is a strong one in many areas, particularly in cash flow, as all orders are paid for in advance. It meant that the company could put a strong case together for investment, and we worked with them to put a package together to able them to get to where they wanted to go.”

Howard Philpott said he welcomed Broomfield & Alexander’s pro-active approach.

“It was their suggestion that we applied for the grant aid,” he said. “I’m delighted that we have been successful, and look forward to working with Broomfield & Alexander as the business advisors on our team as we continue to move forward.”

Find out more about Broomfield & Alexander's corporate finance services by visiting their website at Corporate finance advice online

Date:19 June 2007