Sigma 3 Kitchens chairman Brian Lakin tells Douglas Friedli of Wales Business Insider about the South Wales company's £20m investment in a new factory and equipment, and changing kitchen market conditions.
00:00Good morning, my name is Brian Lakin, I'm chairman of Sigma 3 Kitchens.
00:05We're based in our showroom at our head office in Llan Trescent.
00:10We also have a manufacturing plant here and we've just opened our second manufacturing plant down in Bridgen.
00:18Great, and what's the latest in kitchens? What are people looking for?
00:21People are always looking for variety and the kitchen I'm standing in is a very sort of contemporary look, handle-less, which is extremely popular.
00:34However, that's not to everybody's taste and we have traditional looks as well or as we call it our timeless collection.
00:43So that works very well and very often when we meet customers we try and look to narrow that down.
00:50And it usually does narrow down to say, I like that but it's not for me, or yes, that's the type of thing I'm looking for.
00:58I understand there's quite a big investment going into the company now. What sort of size of investment are we talking about?
01:03Over the last years we've had a £20 million investment programme which has involved new facilities, the new factory in Bridgen,
01:13coupled with very considerable investment in equipment, the most modern equipment which is providing us with extra capacity but also levels of automation
01:25and quality control as well as using technology for other benefits in terms of speed and accuracy.
01:35Great. And what's the result of all that going to be for your business?
01:38Well, it's a springboard really for our future growth. We do feel as if we've been hamstrung over recent years by just not having the capacity to expand.
01:50It's not easy to expand in the current marketplace and the economic climate, but nevertheless we're actually confident that we have got the people,
02:02because we have a great team of people, and the product and the service that will allow us to expand now that we've put in that capacity in place.
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