Anne Ford runs PGM Reball with her husband Mehdi Sabet and is a proud UK manufacturer of small precision ballscrews that fly in the demanding and harsh conditions of aerospace and space. She is passionate about manufacturing, SMEs, her county of Leicestershire as well as the role of women in the workplace, particularly in engineering.
Following a 30-year career in Human Resources in the corporate world, Anne joined her husband’s SME business in 2014 and applied her expertise in process mapping and project management to underpin the business with strong cloud-based systems achieving the aerospace quality standard AS9100 two years later. PGM Reball now has an unrivalled roster of multi-national customers who choose to work with this husband and wife team because of their innovative approach to making quality, light-weight, and compact actuation systems not available from traditional manufacturers.
PGM Reball won New Exporter of the Year in 2010 by establishing a business in Germany and since Brexit has gained Inward Processing authority for refurbishment activity to service a worldwide customer base.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
For global growth, we need to be proactive in seeking help and taking action, making sure that we're going to spend our money and time wisely. Building a strong relationship and maintaining it with your contacts in the export markets is the key. It needs to be tried and tested to see if there are any results, but all initial homework is so critical.
BEST MOMENTS
“The feel in Sweden is that they're very sad that the UK has left the EU because it puts trade barriers in the way so we're not all one on group anymore. We're not all on the same side. And that sort of psychologically really does affect the way that customers think about the UK.”
“Getting to see as many people as possible go to shows and events and exhibitions and just really networking to try to identify the right kind of gets back to relationships again but trying to identify the right kind of partner to work with or to collaborate with. So, I think that that's one challenge. To actually sort of having to get out into the market, which is obviously a big investment in time.”
“I think that there's lots of innovation happening in terms of materials and light-weighting needing to be very compact. So, there are lots of technological developments that if you confine yourself to the UK, you're missing out on a lot of opportunities.”
“If you come across a stumbling block or something that you don't know about, then it's really important to have a trusted adviser effectively that you can tap into whether that's through the DIT or whether you go through a consultant, but that very definitely. I think the other piece of advice is that the DIT, Department for International Trade, will actually try to funnel you into what they call a market.”
ABOUT THE HOST
Levent Yildizgoren, the author of 'Good Business in any Language', is an award-winning entrepreneur, localisation professional, and a PRINCE2 qualified project manager.
CONTACT METHOD
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leventyildizgoren/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/yildizgoren
IG: https://www.instagram.com/levent.yildizgoren/
ABOUT THE GUEST
Anne Ford runs PGM Reball with her husband Mehdi Sabet and is a proud UK manufacturer of small precision ballscrews that fly in the demanding and harsh conditions of aerospace and space.
CONTACT METHOD
VALUABLE RESOURCES
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