Uretek is a worldwide business that pioneered the use of ground injection to treat sinking floors and subsidence. Business and property owners contract Uretek to deliver a non-disruptive solution when a structure or floor drops below safe or operational limits. The innovative technology means a business can continue to operate whilst Uretek works around a site re-leveling floors or improving the ground without affecting operations. The solution is fast; vehicles can travel on the treated floor areas in just 15 minutes which ensures a business will minimise any losses through lack of disruption.
WLN – As a top Ground Engineering supplier, what have conditions been like in the past year for your business?
2016 has been a productive year for Uretek in the UK and worldwide. The key to our growth is ensuring businesses understand our solution and the clear benefits it offers them. We’ve invested internally to grow our engineering and field based teams, meaning we have more flexibility to visit a client site to assess their problems and deliver solutions.
The commercial sector is pivotal for the UK and the demand for business continuity has required us to work on many diverse projects this year. We’ve treated smaller scale units of a few thousand square ft, to incredible distribution centres of up to 60,000 sq ft.
WLN – How have recent international developments affected you and how have you responded?
The implication of the political changes in 2016 are yet to be clearly measured. As a business, we monitor our operating environment regularly and as part of the commercial sector supply chain we expect there will be some consequence to the market.
Should there be a downturn in UK manufacturing and distribution we would expect a knock-on effect whereby asset management costs are tightened and efficiencies are maximised to ensure the market remains competitive with the rest of Europe. The core of our business lies in maintaining operational continuity for clients, which is at the heart of a competitive business.
WLN – What are your flagship products and services?
The core service we provide to the commercial sector is the re-levelling of floors. This is our specialism, it’s something Uretek has perfected over the last 30 years and is a service we deliver across the world – over 100,000 premises have been treated using this solution.
The service is provided where a facility has suffered from settlement. Settlement can happen where the original foundations of a facility were unsuitable for the ground it was built on – leading to it sinking, or where the weight placed on an existing slab is beyond the intended use. This usually happens where racking and automation systems are brought in that have weights beyond the original load limits of the facility.
Moreover, we are now helping clients where they are looking at new facilities where an increased load is required and we provide a stabilisation and ground improvement solution to enable a facility to change its intended use.
WLN – What makes you the ‘go to’ supplier in your category?
We are the only supplier in the UK that has the experience of working on such a diverse range of sites. Our qualified engineering teams have years of experience of designing ground engineering solutions, not only in the commercial sector, but across the built environment including roads, airports, railways and general property. In addition, the material that Uretek uses has been consistently developed for over 30 years specifically for our applications and is uniquely available to Uretek.
Our technical teams on site also have decades of experience in delivering programmes of work in localised patterns which minimises disruption to any business. The alternative to using Uretek would be to relocate or dig out the entire slab – something which in terms of larger facilities would cost millions of pounds.
WLN – How do you help customers improve their business performance?
Typically, Uretek is contacted because there is asset failure. The costs of asset failure, depending on scale, can have far reaching consequences to year end accounts. To improve performance and ensure those consequences are managed and minimised is where we add value to the supply chain.
When a business looks at the long-term costs of maintaining a failing asset against a long-term solution, invariably the economic case for a permanent solution is prudent. The permanent solution is our preferred method for clients, however where necessary we do provide an ongoing maintenance solution.
WLN – How have you changed your offering to customers in the last 12 months and why? Have you added anything new?
In the past 12 months we’ve increased the use of our mobile injection units which enable us to treat warehouses aisle by aisle. This enables our customers to schedule operations more effectively as we only require possession of an aisle for a short period.
WLN – Have you made any enhancements to your customer service?
Over the past 12 months we’ve made improvements across the business. Our customer service team has grown to ensure we can respond quickly to clients and we have added to our field based Area Managers to ensure we can provide a site visit at the convenience of our clients.
We’ve relocated our head office to a new location in Lancashire which houses all the internal support teams. This has enabled greater communication between our customer services and scheduling teams, which means we can offer clients greater flexibility and response times. We can now be onsite the following day if circumstances require it.
WLN – Which markets are your customers in? Which ones are growing fastest?
As a ground engineering company, we are in the unique position of having a broad customer base. However, a good proportion of our work is with customers who operate major distribution facilities in the UK.
These are facilities with extreme loads placed on racking systems, which over time has led to floor settlement. Additionally, we work with clients who are investing in facilities that need ground improvement before they can be used.
WLN – Can you name some of your major customers and tell us what do you do for them?
Unfortunately, due to the nature of our work we have non-disclosure agreements on many of our projects. Although we can say that we work with many of the large distribution & logistics businesses in the UK. The solutions we provide to major customers typically covers a stabilisation and re-leveling solution.
WLN – What’s been your most memorable recent project?
In the commercial sector, we recently delivered a ground stabilisation and relevelling project at a facility in Enfield. The 14,000m2 site had over 60% of the floor settled beyond its original design tolerance and in places up to 105mm were recorded. Site assessments showed steep floor gradients which would impact any use of the site as a warehouse in terms of efficiency and safety. We used our ground injection process to bring back the tolerances in line with the Concrete Society TR34 requirements.
WLN – What were your other major achievements in the last 12 months?
One of our key achievements over the last 12 months has been the international mobility of our UK teams. We have delivered some substantial projects in new territories around the world. We’ve taken UK teams onto sites in the Middle East, performed works at distribution centres in China and across the Nordic countries.
WLN – Are you branching into any new areas, targeting new customers and taking on more people?
We continually look for new areas to work. This year we’ve increased the water sealing capability of our business, which helps to protect assets affected by water ingress and drainage problems. In the years ahead we are also looking to increase the use of the Uretek void filling solution, this utilises a method void fill through a combination of or expansive resins, which not only fills but adds loading strength to structures.
WLN – How important is staff development and training to your growth?
Critical. Like any business, we rely on the experience and skills of our workforce to deliver our projects. We’ve allocated a significant training budget for our staff and are actively encouraging cross functional working to ensure our staff have a holistic view of Uretek and understand in broad terms how we all work together to add value to our customers.
WLN – Looking ahead, what factors do you see affecting your business? How are you turning these into opportunities?
As the UK economy grows, this brings new opportunities for Uretek. The increasing demand for land means a lot of businesses are looking to redevelop existing sites, which will require ground improvement works. It also means that sites that are not fit for purpose, or coming to the end of their designed operational life need to be looked at again. This is where we see Uretek adding value in the years ahead.
WLN – Which major trade shows and other industry events are you involved in over the next year?
We will be at Intralogistics in March and at several events across other industry sectors.
WLN – What headline news from Uretek can our readers look forward to seeing in Warehouse & Logistics News in 2017?
If we can talk about them, we hope to be able to announce that we’ve helped to keep more facilities operational and developed our services to include design solutions for land reclamation. In the wider industry, you should see more from Uretek stabilising roads and railways.
WLN – And finally, in our social media age, if you had to sum up your company in a 140-character tweet what would you say?
Don’t dig up your sinking floor, don’t look for alternative premises, contact Uretek, we’ll lift you up!
URETEK
0800 084 3503
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