August 2010
Letter to Customers
Letter to Suppliers
We are pleased to announce that due to the takeover by Beck Industries in March 2010, Prosper Distribution Limited will now change its name to Beck Prosper Limited.
We feel this name change better reflects the merger of two such strong brands in high integrity bolting.
The Prosper name has a global reputation stretching back as far as 1969 and the unique 3 rings logo symbolises the 3 die rolling machine which the company originally manufactured before becoming a bolting manufacturer. Prosper and Beck felt that these attributes were too valuable to lose therefore both brands have been incorporated into the new name and logo design.
Due to the name change the marketing and IT teams are working on new company literature and a new website design which you should see rolled out in the coming weeks. We will advise when they are live.
New signage is being produced for the exterior of the buildings and staff are awaiting their new uniforms to reflect our status as a world player. The Marketing team are working on re-vamping our reception area and meeting rooms to coincide with the new modern facilities recently opened at Beck Crespel.
Prosper remains firmly at the forefront of offshore bolting especially as the industry wrestles with the subsea challenges presented by deeper and deeper exploration.
The Beck brand also remains strong in this area but is perhaps even better known for its work in Nuclear and alternative energy sectors such as wind. The company anticipates being actively involved in these areas with the promised investment in the UK over the next decade.
Beck Prosper has continually delivered on quality which has enabled the company to celebrate not only reaching but exceeding monthly targets during difficult market conditions.
Since the takeover Beck Prosper has recruited in all areas of the business, bringing the total number of employees to over 135 with interviews still taking place to fill more vacancies. We hope that this continued investment in people, coupled with significant training initiatives will further enhance our customer satisfaction in the second half of 2010.
This month the Kingswinford office welcomes new recruits Stuart Dainty as Power Generation and Special Sales Coordinator, Rebecca Ledbury as office assistant, and Siuzana Ramazanova as Sales Administration Assistant. Suzy spent some time with us earlier this year as a foreign exchange student and we have been delighted to offer her a full time position. All are settling in well to their new roles.
Jo Jones and Vicki Clark completed their 5K run in the Race for Life event in July in just 31 minutes raising much needed funds for Cancer Research. Thank you to all that contributed and their support. Jo and Vicki are already training to compete in the 10K event next year.
July 2010
Although England are out of the World Cup spirits are still high at Prosper.
We exceeded our target in June with our best month for orders received since November 2008, In time honoured tradition the last weekend of June was our annual stock take / tidy up weekend. It was a great team effort with all the members of staff pulling together to spruce up the UK headquarters in Kingswinford. Well done everyone!
A sad au revoir was said to Darren Porter, Export Sales as he made the move over to Northern France to our parent company Beck Crespel, The early reports are that he has settled in well and the schoolboy French seems to be improving. Bon chance Darren.
Ian Crabtree, Power Generation and Specials Co-Ordinator, attended the Power Gen exhibition in Amsterdam along with fellow colleagues Stephane from Beck Crespel, Jean-Pierre from Beck Technologies and Daniel from MSH. It was a great experience for Ian to attend his first exhibition as part of Beck Industries.
We welcome new recruits Elaine Spencer in QA and Lucy Shaw in Marketing who are settling in well to the life of bolting.
Meanwhile Jo Jones, Marketing Co-Ordinator, and Vicki Clark, Sales, are training hard together for their 5k run in the race for life event in aid of Cancer Research in July.
June 2010
Once again Prosper exceeded targets with another superb month, finishing ahead of budget both in terms of sales received and orders despatched. A steady month ended on a crazy high with all hands to the pump in the last week as both office and works got involved to ensure essential orders went out on time. There were exceptional efforts all around especially from the hardy few in the works who put in back to back 16 hour shifts for three days and gave up their Bank Holiday along with Ron York and Nicole Pemberton. Superb effort folks.
The recruitment carousel continues to spin with new arrivals on board in a number of departments - both office and works based.
The additional personnel joining the various teams has enabled Prosper to shuffle existing staff into roles where they can have a more direct influence on the day to day machinations. For example Paul Hill and Phil Gibbard now head up a new administration department tasked with ensuring that the more complicated orders receive additional stringent contract review and are closely scrutinised right through to despatch to ensure all processes stay on track. Tracey Hughes has switched buildings to Unit 19, our production facility, bringing the benefit of her years of strong administration experience. All these slight changes are designed to further improve the flow of information and material through the company with enhanced customer satisfaction the ultimate end product.
As well as recruiting staff Prosper are also glad to see the return of driver Wilf Tunstall following his time off after a major operation. Welcome back Wilf, good to see you up and about again. We also welcome back Heidi Fellows following her maternity leave.
Visits have continued to Beck's head office in Armentieres. These trips have been very successful in further understanding how both companies function and extracting those all important synergies. We have even utilised car boot space for some "hot shot" stock transfers! Some staff took advantage of the trip to visit Ypres and the emotional daily service at the Menin Gate for the fallen in the World Wars.
Prosper are in the process of ordering new uniforms liveried to reflect Beck Industries involvement.
May 2010
The good times continue at Prosper.
May 2010 saw Prosper record their highest monthly sales in over 18 months. The whole team also worked incredibly hard to maintain the on-time delivery performance above the 95% KPI that we set ourselves. The feedback from our customers has been most encouraging. Long may this positivity continue!
Prosper will be present in Amsterdam participating at Powergen 2010 where a representative will be on the Beck stand. Please come over and say 'hello' if you are attending.
As part of the entente cordiale with new owners Beck, Darren Porter will be heading out to join the sales team in Armentieres. This should be a major test of his schoolboy French! Bon chance and au revoir Darren!
The European exchange theme is continued at Kingswinford with two new employees joining the team. A warm Prosper welcome to Bea from Spain and Siuzana from Lithuania.
We have made excellent progress in filling the ten vacancies identified last month but we are still interested in hearing from anyone with industry knowledge.
Please contact our HR department with your details recruitment@beckprosper.com
April 2010
Prosper Visit Beck Crespel
April saw the first group of Prosper staff visit the headquarters of new owners Beck Crespel in Armentieres, Northern France.
Karine and Hugo Charbonnier have kindly extended an invitation to all Prosper employees to visit their facility and utilise this opportunity to discuss any concerns that they may have.
It is a great opportunity for the Prosper staff and the feedback from the groups that have been so far is that they have been made to feel very welcome and were very well looked after by both their new owners and fellow co-workers. The Prosper employees were given a tour of the manufacturing facility and were most impressed by the engineering capabilities and the standard of the products being manufactured. Beck's new offices, which have only been occupied for a few weeks, are very spacious, modern and equally as impressive.
Each member of staff spent a little time with their French counterpart and this has improved both relations and communications between the companies. Many of Beck's systems and processes were recognised to be of future benefit to Prosper and there are already plans to implement some of them in the UK.
It became clear to those first Prosper visitors that the acquisition by Beck Industries was a step in the right direction for all concerned. Prosper now have access to much larger stock levels and investment plans are already in place for new machinery at the UK headquarters in Kingswinford and 10 new vacancies have already been created.
More trips are planned for the next few months and those organising their excursions to the continent are very excited about their visit to Armentières.
March 2010
Acquisition of Prosper Distribution Limited by Beck Industries
We are very pleased to announce that Prosper Distribution Limited (PDL) has joined Beck Industries, Europe's leading manufacturer of special bolts for the power generation and oil industries.
The "Prosper" name has been well known for years as one of the very few top British manufacturers of special bolts for subsea, petrochemical and power generation industries. Thanks to its recent merger with Midsteel and subsequent rationalisation and sales success, the company is expanding strongly especially in the subsea industry.
PDL now employs over 120 people in Kingswinford, in the heart of the Midlands and in Aberdeen, the Scottish base for the North Sea subsea activities. PDL sales exceed 13M GBP, including worldwide exports.
PDL perfectly complements Beck Industries, both for sales areas and product portfolio. Beck Industries brings to Prosper a large and diversified manufacturing capacity and synergies will range from technical to purchasing and sales.
The new group turnover will exceed 65M Euros and this acquisition will further strengthen the current impetus in all sites.
PDL and Beck both share the same absolute resolve regarding quality and safety. Our clients operate facilities and equipments where human lives and the environment are at risk. In such an acquisition it was a prerequisite that the quality culture matched. Our clients will benefit from the advantages of bringing together two companies with a similar approach to business and a similar attitude to integrity. Our ability to serve international contracts is also further enhanced. We have solid grounds to be excited and ambitious for the new venture and for the international development of Beck Industries.
The merger between the companies will be seamless and PDL will continue to function as a market leader in the high integrity bolting industry with Martin Boulter remaining as the Managing Director.
Beck Industries is a 4th generation family-owned group, focussed on the manufacturing of special bolting, operating 8 sites in France, Germany, Belgium, China and now, the United Kingdom.
Hugues and Karine Charbonnier
Armentieres, 26th of March 2010
February 2010
Sees us embarking on our travel programme for 2010.
Sales in January have been encouragingly brisk, 37% above budget, and it has been a busy month internally despite some dreadful weather.
During 2009 we hosted a stream of client visits and audits keen to see our new facilities.
Our intentions for 2010 are to return these visits and get back out into the marketplace.
We have already committed in excess of GBP 100k to our travel budget for 2010 and have determined our specific plan for the first six months.
This will include visits to both suppliers and customers.
We believe it pays to invest in "getting out there".
If you would like a visit please let us know as our staff are always keen to meet and greet with new people and experience different cultures.
The Prosper logo is derived from the original thread rolling machine that the company used to manufacture before being encouraged into making the bolts themselves by BP in the 1970s.
Hopefully you will be seeing this logo soon sported by our liveried staff.
January 2010
All the staff at Prosper Distribution Limited would like to wish you a Happy New Year and a Prosperous 2010.
We look forward to receiving your enquiries and assisting you with your requirements.
December 2009
Our Christmas schedule is now available: HERE.
October 2009
October sees a number of improvements to systems in our stock/dispatch warehouse in building 67.
These are motivated by the NVQ training initiatives for a large group of our warehouse operatives which will be completed during the month.The despatch and packing area have been re designed and new recording methods for picking and packing have been agreed to enhance our OTD performance.
Prosper's Manufacturing division,building 19, will be the next area designated for NVQW training which will commence in the first week of October ably supported by some simple third party time and motion analysis.
Great emphasis has been placed on further development of our Inspection team of Andrew Shepherd and Adrian Spencer, both having completed MPI Level III training courses in September.Well done lads.
The company has also purchased a new portable hand held Thermo Scientific Niton XL3 Alloy Analyser to upgrade our PMI capability.
September 2009
September sees the return of Chris Morris as our new Training Manager. We hope to utilise skills obtained from his recent teaching qualification and draw upon the knowledge within the organisation to capitalise upon the learning potential of what is already an exceptional team. Chris intends to identify areas which require further training through discussions with his colleagues and by analysing the data gathered by our KPIs. This information will be used to develop a training scheme which he believes will appeal to the varied learning styles currently at Prosper.
We are delighted to appoint Steve Blakey as manager for our distribution warehouse. Steve has impressed since joining us as a stock controller and we are delighted to be able to promote from within.
Steve will continue to oversee stock control whilst liaising closely with Raymond Norris, manager at our manufacturing plant located on the same estate, to smooth product flow and improve our OTD.
We have appointed Paul Hill from our sales department as our Sub Con Manager to focus and work with our local supply base as their performance naturally impacts greatly on our own. From his sales role Paul has a solid product knowledge and good customer focus which should enhance our production department further.
Finally we are delighted to announce that Miss Joanne Lunn, our marketing coordinator, is now Mrs Joanne Jones. Our congratulations go to Joanne and Neil on their recent wedding.
August 2009
August sees a flurry of sales activity despite the recession and holiday period.
We have secured first call off orders on two new European projects-initially GBP 600k with more to come.
These were taken against Global competition and are very welcome.
We have also retained one existing supply agreement and secured another new supply agreement-both running for three years.
We are pleased to welcome Ian Crabtree back into our sales team.
He has endured a brief sabbatical with a competitor but is delighted to have "come home".
We are using his experience to concentrate on developing our sales on the more exotic materials for our specials client base.
July 2009
Prosper Gains ISO 9001 Registration in China
Following an assessment by Lloyds register Quality Assurance (LRQA) in June 2009, Prosper's Testing and Inspection facility in China has now gained ISO 9001 accreditation for the "Procurement, Inspection and Testing of high integrity bolting and associated products for Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Business to international standards." This falls in line with our Global Procurement strategy which recognises the global desire from our clients for product from LCC's provided there is no compromise on our normal standards of quality or service.
Our certificate is available HERE.
June 2009
Archie Fleming, our Global Technical Manager, based in Ayrshire has just returned from an ASTM Committeee week in Vancouver.
Organised in 1898, ASTM International is one of the largest voluntary standards developing organizations in the world. ASTM is a not-for-profit organization that provides a forum for the development
and publication of voluntary consensus standards for materials, products, systems, and services. ASTM’s members, representing producers, users, consumers, government, and academia from over 100
countries, develop technical documents that are a basis for manufacturing, management, procurement, codes, and regulations.
Members can belong to one or more committees, each of which covers a subject area such as steel, petroleum, medical devices, property management, consumer products, and many more. It is these
committees that develop the more than 12,000 ASTM standards that can be found in the 77-volume Annual Book of ASTM Standards. Archie is a member of Committee A01 and Subcommittees A01.22 and
A01.22.01 which cover Bolting.
May 2009
PROSPER WIN GLOBAL FASTENER AGREEMENT
Prosper are proud to announce the award of the Global Supply Agreement for Fasteners from Aker Solutions.
Aker Solutions, part of the large Norwegian industrial conglomerate, were looking for a supplier who, in addition to reliable service and best total cost, would have in place Quality and
Manufacturing systems that would give:
- Built in traceability
- Extensive machining and inspection capability
- High levels of Technical expertise
- Excellent control of Documentation
We are pleased that Aker Solutions, after a rigorous series of audits, have found those principles in Prosper.
April 2009
The Prosper family continues to expand.
April saw the return of Hongmei Yuan from maternity leave after the birth of her son Landi. Hongmei's mandarin skills form a key part of the service provided by the Global procurement team and
everyone is delighted to have her sunny presence back in the Kilmarnock office.She provides an excellent link to our operation in China.
Congratulations as well to our Director John Lithgow on the birth of his son Robbie James. Enjoy your leave John and we will be glad to see you back ready for the next development phase in
Aberdeen.
March 2009
March 2009 sees the appointment of Paul Jones as our Financial Director designate. Alan Street will gradually relinquish day-to-day control to Paul so he can concentrate on other key projects. We
welcome Paul to our team.
In March our new website becomes operational. We hope it will illustrate how much Prosper has evolved in recent years and be a fair representation of the professionalism, dedication and passion that
we pride ourselves on.
February 2009
February 2009 sees a total reorganisation of our Production Office. We have worked hard on delivery performance and in February we recorded over 80% on time and 97% within 7 days. We take this opportunity to thank our loyal clients for bearing with us as we change for the better. Our KPI target remains over 95% on time.
January 2009
January 2009 sees our sales team book orders over GBP 1.7 million in value despite the "credit crunch". Long may this continue.
December 2008
December 2008 sees the final closure of our Irvine manufacturing facility and its relocation near to our distribution warehouse in Kingswinford.
November 2008
November 2008 sees us booking orders which generate 6500 hours of machining for our new machine shop.
