Dilligence opens up a world of business for Baylis

In the summer of 1981, the now Lord Tebbit offered some encouragement to those who were suddenly jobless, based on his own father’s experience of hardship in the depression of the 1930s. “He got on his bike and looked for work, and he went on looking until he found it,” he said. In the summer of 2005 Smethwick automotive pressings company Baylis Automotive responded in much the same way to the collapse of MG Rover. Now business is booming. This year they are looking at a turnover of more than £7million – up from under £3million in 2005-2006.

Their customers include Land

Rover, Jaguar, Ford, CES, Visteon, Johnson Controls and Denso Manufacturing and their international
markets extend from Spain, Germany and the Czech Republic to India, Mexico and China. When MG Rover failed, Baylis were looking at a black hole in their business of around £1.5 million. But with the aid of the West Midlands automotive supply chain network Accelerate they have not only plugged the gap, but also filled it many times over. Leading the company’s recovery has been Managing Director Raj Desai, a man who embodies the firm’s “can-do” philosophy and of whom Accelerate Adviser Norman Taylor says: “Raj Desai will tell you . . . If you get off your backside, you can get work.”

Raj turns out to be as forthright as advertised: “It’s a tough industry. You have got to get on with it,” he says. Baylis clearly have. In 2004-2005, their turnover was £4.7million. On the back of MG Rover’s demise and a general downturn in the industry, that had dropped to £2.7million in the next financial year. Says Raj: “We recovered through 2006-2007 and went back up to £4.7million and this year the running rate is £7.5million. At the end of 2008-2009 we expect to be around £10m, which fits into our original 5-year business plan”.

He admits that post April 2005 the Baylis plant was a quiet place, but points out: “The crux of the matter was that with some of our other customers we weren’t really looking after them or responding to their requests." The result has been a major uplift in contracts, including £1.6million pa with CES, £1million pa with Visteon for parts for the new Freelander and £1.5million pa, again with Visteon for a transfer of business from one of their own plants, plus another million or so on other contracts.

Accelerate adviser Norman Taylor has worked with Baylis for four or five years, in which time the company has been bought by Hunt and Rogers Automotive and moved into their Smethwick plant that was previously owned by Wagon plc. He is full of praise for the way the company has bounced back including making improvements to the plant itself. “Accelerate initially went in with some aid, including wage replacement and retraining,” he recalls. “During this time Baylis were very proactive and went out to find new work. They have attracted an awful lot of new business.”