Bridgnorth business has 'turned corner' say upbeat bosses

Bridgnorth’s Grainger & Worrall, providers of casting, machining and engineering solutions for prototyping, motorsport and supercars, employ more than 700 staff across the region, and was the subject of a management buyout earlier this year.

This week, Grainger & Worrall Limited and Grainger & Worrall Machining Limited – which had face challenges from Covid and Brexit – announced their annual report for the financial year, ending October 31, 2022, had been filed at Companies House.

The results relate to a period prior to the buyout of the group by Evolution Castings Group Limited. For the 17-month trading period, the companies reported a combined turnover of £77.6 million along with a combined loss of £5.3 million. Bosses said the loss included significant costs relating to the business’s restructuring.

Iain Johnson, Group Chief Financial Officer, said: “The results we have released are of no surprise. The business had been experiencing significant challenges during the period and a very intensive turnaround was put into effect during late 2022 which led to the management buyout by the Evolution Castings Group team in June 2023.

“The very positive changes in the business are now being felt in our performance and most importantly by the team, suppliers and customers. There has been a significant positive shift in the business thanks to everyone’s efforts and, with reset of the company’s liquidity in June 2023, our auditors have now been able to conclude that there are no material uncertainties that may cast doubt on the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.

"This is a fundamental change to where the business was last year.”

Company bosses said positive action, since changes were put in place, has included a pay award of £1.2 million made to the workforce.

They said more focus is now being brought on diversity and inclusivity with a recently formed Evolution Women forum.

Chairman Andrew Burn added: “The extent of the group’s losses in the reported period were expected and have been planned for.

“What is important for everyone to remember is that these are the results for the period when the business was experiencing significant difficulties. I am pleased that as a result of the management buyout the business is in a much stronger position now.

"We now have a team of over 770 people, and we have been consistently making profits each month since April. We have turned the corner and we are seeing the impact of this on our stakeholders.

“We have a brilliant team and very experienced and dedicated individuals, and we are now focussing on putting in place much stronger learning and development activities and rebooting our ESG strategy.

“We are keen to embrace diversity and are cultivating a much more inclusive environment in the business.

“For example, one of our very bright up and coming engineers is taking the lead in creating Evolution Women, a forum within the business that will focus on attracting more women into the group and encouraging women into engineering.

“Our suppliers are also hopefully feeling the differences with increased demand and our turnover grows and I am delighted to say that a couple of weeks ago we were able to bring all of our suppliers back into terms and credit rating agencies have become increasingly supportive.

“Customer demand has been growing thanks to the amazing knowledge and expertise of our team with enquiries that we are dealing with being valued at over £100 million as we become market focussed and emphasise the group’s unique selling points.

“Thanks to incredible efforts of our stakeholders and the whole team, the business it is now a very different place. We still have much more to do but we are well on the way with our journey.”