Mid Year Review

Having an expert team, focused on delivering high quality solutions to our growing customer base is fundamental to Bensons ongoing success. This focus can sometimes lead to getting absorbed in the day-to-day detail and neglecting to take a step back and acknowledge the successes we collectively achieve along the way.

Halfway through the financial year seems an opportune moment to take that much needed step back and take note of our successes.

Customers and sectors

Excellent customer relationships underpin everything that we do at Bensons. This has continued through 2024 with the addition of new customers to our portfolio alongside repeat orders from customers who were with us last year.

The has resulted in us maintaining a strong position in industry sectors where we have a strong legacy, but also allowed us to grow our business in new sectors. To this end:

• We have secured and are in the process of delivering a suit of over 300 control panels for a major data centre development in the south of England
• We have continued to develop our presence in the low carbon sector, winning and now delivering multiple projects to support the roll-out of EV charging infrastructure across the UK,
• We have also secured and are in the process of delivering control panels for five commercial solar PV projects in the UK.
• Several Distributed Energy projects have been delivered to a range of clients, again building on our legacy in this sector.

The impact of this is that orders are running at around 30% above previous year's levels.

People

Delivering the new projects that we secure is dependent upon the people that we have at Bensons, to this end we have continued to invest in and to develop our team:

• Our fourth annual employee engagement survey demonstrated that our engagement levels remain above the national average
• We have maintained our commitment to developing careers in engineering and manufacturing. This has taken the form of our support of the Leeds Manufacturing Festival, and through our apprenticeship scheme.
• We have recruited three new apprentices; secured an Excellent Employer Gold Kite Mark from Next Gen Makers and we were immensely proud when our second-year apprentice Dan won the Apprentice of the Year at the 2024 Leeds Manufacturing Festival Awards
• To strengthen the leadership of Bensons, Tony Weston was appointed at Head of Operations in April, bringing much welcomed experience and expertise in the leadership of manufacturing organisations.
• Recognising talent and allowing it to flourish is key, to that end Michelle Spence was promoted to Compliance and Administration Manager in September, recognising the excellent work done in recent years to ensure the smooth operation of our systems. This was demonstrated by our blemish free, three-year audit and renewal of our BSI 9001 accreditation in July.

Facilities

To get the best from a team, they then need to be operating in an excellent environment. Over the summer we invested in a much needed refurbishment of the building. The aim being to create an area we can all be proud of which provides a high-quality meeting space for customers and for training, whilst also giving the team a modern break out area and kitchen in which to take a break and strengthen the culture, relationships and team spirit which underpins Bensons.

To celebrate these successes and squeeze the final few drops of fun out of the summer, we held our second annual company BBQ in early September to bring the team together, acknowledge what we have achieved and reset ahead of a busy few months.