The move from Le Maitre's previous US headquarters in Austin, Texas was something that Le Maitre USA joint-owner Karen Haddon had been keen to make happen for a while. She says: "Finding the right location for us in Vegas has involved a great deal of time and effort, but it's absolutely been worth it all. The move to Vegas offers a number of great benefits for us. First and perhaps most obviously, it's the capital of the entertainment industry in North America and a large number of our key customers are located there too. Secondly our new offices are located on four acres of land offering great scope for growing the business.
"Starting within the next 12 months we will begin to develop the site extensively, enabling us to produce our own smoke and haze fluids on site, conduct sub-product assembly as well as R&D, and demonstrate as well as manufacture pyro there in the future. Thirdly, the dry climate in Vegas is, of course, perfect for our pyro products, compared to the humidity of Austin."
Randy Segeren, Le Maitre USA's recently appointed president, adds: "I'm so pleased we've been able to make this move. It is really going to help us build even stronger relationships with key accounts, and it will be so much easier to demonstrate product and have face to face meetings. Furthermore, there's the additional benefit of being able to provide an even better service to our customers in terms of response times for product as a result of onsite production. This is really great news as we've some ambitious sales growth planned."
Le Maitre's sales are continuing to increase and not just in the US, but worldwide. The company has recently invested in increasing productivity at its pyrotechnics factory in Peterborough, UK, in order to cope with demand.
Says Haddon: "The pyrotechnic manufacturing process can be a very labour intensive process, and Le Maitre had reached almost full production capacity by last November, traditionally the highest production month of the year."
To increase capacity and look at introducing longer term cost efficiencies, Le Maitre researched alternative production methods exploring different industries before subsequently identifying a 20 station tablet press, usually found in the pharmaceutical industry. Colin Lindsay, factory manager at Peterborough, has been steering the new production methods, which have had to involve careful adjustment of product composition. Says Lindsay: "The new tablet press toolsets are being used on a whole host of products from Micro Mines through to 60' Mines. Compositions have had to be re-developed, as the process is very different to our previous one, so there's been a lot of work by staff to get this perfected."
According to Lindsay and Haddon the new process will be able to operate at a phenomenal rate, producing between 24,000 and 26,000 units per hour, regardless of diameter. Le Maitre estimates this new production process will result in an increase in capacity of over 50%.
In conclusion Haddon says: "With sales continuing to grow so well, it is key to the business that we continually plan ahead. In addition to the new production methods in place at Peterborough along with the new Las Vegas location for Le Maitre USA and the plans there for local production, we are also currently implementing a complete new software program which will incorporate all finance, sales and stock information across all three o
