High standards and continuous improvement are core business values here and I’ve spoken many times previously about our commitment to top accreditations. As well as supporting best practice, we are firm believers that achieving industry awards brings transferable benefits for our customers over the longer term.

Our Green Mark certification, for example, supports greater sustainability and efficiency while providing customers with faster, more reliable regulatory reporting for compliance purposes. JOSCAR accreditation, on the other hand, streamlines the procurement process by helping organisations determine supplier suitability for particular types of contract using their pre-validated business information. Therefore achieving accreditations such as these carries benefits for both supplier and customer.

Moving on to AS9120B certification, a critical award for customers in the aerospace sector, I’m very pleased to confirm that we’ve passed our recent AS9120 surveillance audit with a clean slate and no non-conformities. This was a periodic assessment between full certification cycles to ensure our quality management system remains compliant with the AS9120:2016 (Rev B) standard. It considers areas such as counterfeit part prevention, full chain custody and configuration management, as well as risk mitigation procedures associated with supply chain disruptions and potential product failures. In short it says we continue to meet the specific demands of the aerospace industry for delivery of safe, reliable, and authentic product.

This positive result from the interim audit affirms how well our new ERP system is bedding in to the business. The system is based around proprietary tech designed for the metals industry and integrates all our core business processes to provide real-time visibility across every stage of the order, production and delivery process. It’s adaptable and customisable too – which means we’re able to adjust the content of order and delivery paperwork to reflect specific customer needs. This is particularly useful for those who require paper trail confirmation of full chain custody in addition to our AS9120 accreditation, (which is normally regarded as sufficient for compliance).

The AS9120 audit and new ERP system have also given us fresh impetus to review our operational procedures in a wider context to ensure we’re working in the most efficient way for customers. A good example is the work we’re currently undertaking in our warehouse to ensure that space and processes are optimised now and for our planned future growth.

Changing tack for a moment, before Christmas I mentioned our involvement with Halesowen Cycling Academy and the success the junior and under-23 teams had achieved during 2025 in a full calendar of events. We remain committed to supporting community initiatives that fit with our own values and I’m very happy to announce that we are continuing our sponsorship of the Academy for the next two years. We’ll be reporting back on how the teams are progressing during the season and covering some of the stories behind the main events so please keep checking back here for more information.

Wrapping up for this month, as always please don’t hesitate to contact me directly about any of the topics referenced here, if you’d like to discuss an order, or have any questions or technical queries – and I’ll do my best to help!