Established over 40 years, Northern Industrial exports industrial spare parts and repair services to manufacturing and engineering companies across the world. The company’s central operation in Blackburn, UK, holds over £10m in stock, covering over 200,000 parts numbers, sourced from over 1,350 manufacturers.
As well as providing new replacement parts from manufacturers including Control Techniques, Beijer, Allen Bradley, Danfoss and Pixsys, the company specialises in providing obsolete spare parts and repairs solutions primarily for industrial equipment and production lines no-longer supported by OEMs.
The company’s specialist buying department sources and refurbishes obsolete parts from across the world, which are sold via its multilingual website and customer service team, with express distribution worldwide. It also recently launched a new division dedicated to the recovery and refurbishment of semiconductors in response to the global semiconductor shortage.
Exporting to over 146 countries across the world, Northern Industrial provided vital spare parts and repair services to over 4,000 companies in 2021 alone.
Recent years have seen year-on-year escalation in demand for the UK company, which last year celebrated its sixth successive year of growth, with a 20% increase in sales compared to the previous year.
As a global exporter with a multinational team, managing director David Lenehan is regularly called upon as a business commentator for mainstream media, including the BBC, ITN, Sky News, The Times (London) and Bloomberg, on issues ranging from Brexit to Covid.
Opening to help meet ongoing increases in demand, the new site in Herten, north Germany, will aim to eventually equal the UK operation, focussing on servicing customers in the EU, while the UK focusses on the rest of the world, including the Americas from its site in Mexico.
The new German operation is being launched by Matthew Baldwin and Jerome Hoffarth with support from the head office in the UK.
Baldwin, who previously worked for Northern Industrial in Blackburn before moving to Germany three years ago, will manage technical services while Hoffarth manages sales.
Northern Industrial managing director David Lenehan said: “Germany has the largest industrial economy in Europe, which makes it the obvious location to open our first European site outside the UK.
“Our new operations in Germany will help us deliver spare parts that EU customers urgently require as quickly as possible.
“Going forwards, the plan is that Germany will be the central hub for the EU, while our site in Mexico primarily services the Americas, allowing Blackburn to focus on the UK and the rest of the world.
“We are particularly pleased to welcome Matthew Baldwin back to the company and to see him spearhead this new venture alongside new joiner Jerome and we are confident they will be able to build an EU-based operation to rival our existing UK operation.”
On the opening of the German operation, Matthew Baldwin said: “We are immensely proud and excited to be launching Northern Industrial in Germany as a central hub for the European Union.
“A recent global study showed the majority of companies across the world have experienced at least one unplanned period of downtime over the previous three years, costing an average USD260,000 an hour across all businesses.
“The Vanson Bourne global study, sponsored by ServiceMax, from GE Digital, surveyed 450 companies in the UK, US, France and Germany across the manufacturing, medical, oil and gas, energy and utilities, telecoms, distribution, logistics and transport sectors.
“As well as estimating downtime losses to average USD2million per year for 82% of businesses, it also concluded that around 70% of companies lack full awareness of when their equipment is due for maintenance, upgrade or replacement.
“Northern Industrial has been established and is continuing to grow by providing the spare parts and repair services companies worldwide need to avoid costly downtime, and so we are really excited to be launching this operation in Germany to further improve the speed of our spare parts delivery and repairs services for EU customers during stressful breakdown situations, while also providing solutions for preventative maintenance.”
