Just 10 months after moving to a new 100,000ft2 headquarters near Stoke-on-Trent, Panelco is looking for bigger premises to cope with a dramatic growth in business.
The move would bring operations onto one site and increase manufacturing and distribution space to 250,000ft2. Panelco is also looking at opening regional depots, said director Simon Wood.
He said: “We had two warehouses in Stoke-on-Trent and with our other site for Duropal worktops, we doubled our capacity to 150,000ft2. We are quickly filling that and are looking at one larger site. We are doing site identification within a couple of miles of where we are and heading towards a move in 18 months.”
Panelco, established seven years ago, is now a £14m-a-year business marketing and distributing primarily melamine-faced chipboard sheets. Mr Woods expects sales to double within three years.
Next month a £500,000 investment in automated cutting and edge banding machines comes on stream at the Duropal centre handling 38mm worktops, which the company believes could add £5m to turnover.
However, 90% of sales are in melamine-faced sheets to kitchen and bathroom manufacturers. The new building at Blyth Bridge stores the largest stock of MFC in the UK with 80,000 sheets of 800 products from eight manufacturers, including an extensive range of Pfleiderer‘s Wodego MFC doors.
Mr Wood said: “Logistics has been the biggest area of our growth. The move has enabled us to service the market to a higher standard than our competitors and allowed us to widen our product range and customer base.
“We have to start to look at expanding on a geographical basis because it is difficult to distribute in other areas and I can see a need for new depots.”
