Richard Armitage
Managing Director Adaptive Control
Expect to double turnover within next 2 years
Adaptive Control automates, controls and monitors machines, systems and factories all around the world. The company has a wealth of experience of all kinds of industrial equipment and advises on how to get projects working. Richard Armitage, Managing Director, Adaptive Control, spoke to Fibre2Fashion about the impact of the pandemic on the company’s business, and the kind of revenue expectations and capacity expansion plans it has going forward.
How has Covid-19 impacted your country, especially the business of machinery for textiles?
From the first UK lockdown in March 2020, sales input reduced by half. This period went on for 6 months and then steeply rose again to about 80 per cent of usual turnover by October. From October onwards we were back at 100 per cent and during 2021 we saw a rise in business by about 20 per cent.
By what percentage has this affected profit and is likely to impact further?
Overall, for our financial year 2019/2020 (Nov 19 to Oct 20) we saw a drop in profit by about 10 per cent on the previous year. This is largely due to a very good start to the financial year before the pandemic happened. Financial year 2020/21 is looking to have an increased profitability come Oct 2021.
What is Adaptive Control’s size and scale? What about your global footprints?
Being mainly a software company, our global footprint is very small in terms of people and carbon emissions. We have 14 people employed in our UK office and 7 people employed in our US office. We also license our software to a Taiwanese company who gives us access to China and large parts of South East Asia.
What is the growth story of Adaptive Control?
For the current financial year our UK operation is looking at a growth of 20 per cent.
What were the major achievements of the company in the last one year? Which new projects were started? What new products in pipeline?
During the past 12 months we have seen installation and orders for several new markets in textiles--Jordan and Vietnam. We would rather not mention specifics at this time. We also do quite a lot of work in non textiles and this business is also performing well.
How many textile factories do you serve worldwide?
Including our US, UK and Asian partners we have installations in 40 countries. Exact number of textile factories is hard to estimate but I would imagine somewhere in the range of 300 sites.
Where do you source the raw materials from?
As we use mainly industrial computer equipment and control panel LV components, these are mainly manufactured in Taiwan and Europe and mostly sourced via European distributors.
Where are your manufacturing facilities based at? If working with vendors, where are the vendors based at?
Production is in the 3 countries mentioned and we service mainly the local markets. Although our UK office services all of Europe the Middle East, Africa and some parts of Asia.
How are your machines superior to other suppliers?
Difficult to say accurately as it can be very subjective depending on the clients’ needs and requirements. However, we promote ourselves as a non-proprietary solution and with R&D works in the IOT world we consider ourselves to be cutting edge. Also being a relatively small company decisions and development is very rapid.
Which are your major markets?
By industry: Textiles, Composites, Food & Beverage and general manufacturing industries.
By location: UK & Europe, Americas.
According to you, how will the textile machinery scene develop in the next few years?
I can only see the textile industry grow as does population. However, I think smarter, lower energy and carbon technologies will become more available. In particular there is an interesting development with a company called Colorifix using bacteria to make colour pigments. This, if successful, could be massive in global energy and pollution reductions.
What are your future plans? What kind of capacity expansion are you planning?
With business as a whole, we expect to double in turnover within the next 2 years. With a diverse range of industries and clients we are seeing a growing requirement for technology, visibility and production efficiency within manufacturing.
What is the turnover of the company as on date? What are the revenue expectations for the current fiscal?
We envisage our UK and US businesses collectively will turn over $3.4 million for the current financial year.
Published on: 21/07/2021
DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
