Link-up will make steel company even stronger
ANEW agreement has been signed by a Black Country manufacturer which will create and safeguard more than 100 jobs.
Fastline Steel Services, based in Willenhall, is working with Shropshire outfit Corbetts the Galvanizers on the tie-up, which will guarantee more than 15,000 tonnes of perimeter steel fencing will be galvanized there every year.
The decision, which creates up to 40 new jobs and safeguards a further 80 across the two firms, is aimed at delivering increased capacity and reduced lead times.
Corbetts, which celebrated 160 years in business in 2020, currently galvanizes more than 100 tonnes of products every week for Fastline, with the second line providing the opportunity for large increases.
Fastline’s products are used in fields such as construction, prisons, rail, utilities and with the Ministry of Defence.
Mike Fellows, managing director of Fastline Steel Services, said: “This is a very exciting move for the business and will help support growth plans that will initially take turnover from £15 million to £30 million over the next 18 months.
“There is significant interest in our core fabricated products.
“This means we require a strategic partner we trust to deliver the galvanizing capacity and quality, and Corbetts really stepped up when we gave it the challenge.
“There’s also a significant environmental benefit as we are reducing
hundreds of journeys and minimising energy usage whenever we can.” Sophie Williams, finance director and general manager at Corbetts the Galvanizers, added: “This marks the next stage of a five-year relationship and a new way for galvanizers and manufacturers to work together.
“The pandemic and subsequent lockdowns had cut our volumes in certain sectors, and that meant we temporarily consolidated all business into our larger plant.
“While this was not ideal, it did give us the opportunity to take a longer-term view of how we wanted to work with our customers to build more strategic partnerships.”
AMICHELIN-STARRED chef is planning to create up to 20 jobs by moving his home delivery food business into new premises in Birmingham.
Aktar Islam, who runs Opheem in the Jewellery Quarter and Pulperia in Brindleyplace, developed ‘Aktar at Home’ when the sites were closed as a result of the Covid-19 restrictions. The service currently operates from his restaurants but Mr Islam said he needed to find new space for when they reopened as lockdown restrictions were eased over the coming months.
It will now be based in a 7,300 sq ft property in Digbeth.
He said: “There’s been a huge demand for Aktar at Home but more important than that is the fact it has helped me and my team to support the needy in our local community by continuing to provide hundreds of meals weekly to local charities. “We’ve been operating the new service from our restaurants but once they reopen we will need our own space and this will now give us the chance to create 15 to 20 new jobs. “We will be recruiting from the inner city, from areas that have high unemployment levels, helping some of the city’s disadvantaged people into work.”
The deal on the new premises in
New Bartholomew Street was brokered by Jewellery Quarter property agency Siddall Jones. Owner Edward Siddall-Jones added: “We spoke to Aktar regarding his requirements and immediately
identified one of our properties that would be right for his proposed business use.
“We’re really pleased to have been of assistance to Aktar.
“He already runs two of the city’s top restaurants and, despite facing all the challenges that covid-19 has
brought, it’s brilliant to see him still thriving with his new business.
“As we emerge from lockdown, the property market is booming, driven by a massive lack of good industrial stock and an increase in willing tenants who are out there looking for new space.”
THE “explosion” of scams is eroding trust in official sources of information, consumer champion Martin Lewis has warned.
Speaking to the House of Lords Liaison Committee, Mr Lewis said people who have been “burnt” by scammers will not trust legitimate organisations.
Fraudsters have often used images of Mr Lewis in their advertising to make themselves appear legitimate.
Mr Lewis told the hearing: “We have an explosion of scams in the United Kingdom at the moment, many of them financial.
“Quite a few of them have my face on them, quite a lot don’t as well. Those scams are eroding trust in official sources of information.
“That is making improving financial inclusion far more difficult when people who have already been burnt by scammers using similar language won’t trust official bodies.
“It needs to be put in the Online Harms Bill, there is no plan for that to happen, if that doesn’t happen I am extremely worried how we will ever have financial leadership in this sector again when there are so many scammers purporting to offer it.”
Fraudsters have used the coronavirus crisis to prey on people over the past year, with offers of fake refunds, fake investments and fake offers of masks and hand sanitisers. They will often make their websites appear to belong to legitimate and well-known brands.
The committee is looking at the
progress made to tackle exclusion.
A report from the Financial Exclusion Committee in 2017 found that more than 1.7 million people in the UK did not have a bank account and 40 per cent of the working-age population had less than £100 in savings. Since that report was published, the coronavirus crisis has damaged many households’ finances, with evidence suggesting it has exacerbated
financial
existing inequalities in society.
Cash use has also declined rapidly during the pandemic - and Mr Lewis raised concerns about the dangers of “enjoying” moving towards a cashless society.
He told the committee: “We should remember that many people are enjoying the move to a cashless society. And that is almost a danger in itself.
“It becomes
accepted
by
the mainstream that we don’t need cash anymore and therefore people don’t consider the need to protect it.”
Mr Lewis, who founded MoneySavingExpert.com and the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, said the financial education landscape has improved.
Mentioning how he has funded textbooks for schools, Mr Lewis added: “It’s still worth noting, and I say this not to self-aggrandise, but to put it in proportion, I have still put more money personally into financial education than the official Money and Pensions Service has, and I hear it’s talking about reducing budgets for financial education next year.
“I think that is disastrous and needs to be overturned.”
Mr Lewis also highlighted “the up to three million people who have been excluded from financial support in a short-sighted way that will catastrophise their finances and leave them excluded possibly for years in the future”.
He said: “I could not in good conscience come and talk to this committee without at least nodding to the problem of the excluded caused by the pandemic.”
Natalie Ceeney, who chaired the Access to Cash Review, told the committee: “You cannot survive in today’s society without access to basic banking, without access to payments.”
She said regulators need more powers, adding: “They don’t have a statutory duty to make the banks include everybody and they need those powers.”