Tents firm to canvass world for work (From Western Telegraph)

Tents firm to canvass world for work

A GWENT firm which has supplied tents to the Arabs and which played a key role in creating London's Millennium Dome now has even bigger jobs in its sights.

Chepstow-based Landrell says it can compete effectively on the world market after merging with the Bris-tol-based fabric structure firm Architen.

And it is now looking to boost its workforce number and triple its turnover in three years. Landrell has linked with the English firm to form Architen Landrell to create a £10m a year turnover business employing 100 people across two sites.

Landrell, which created a 'birthday pavilion' for fabulously rich Sultan of Brunei for his 50th birthday and worked with super rock groups The Stones and Pink Floyd, is now looking to expand.

Lance Rowell, boss of Landrell, is now group chairman of the enlarged Anglo/ Welsh group.

Mr Rowell, who recently returned to the fray after a sabbatical, said the merger "made sense" as the two firms were complementary and has been in competition with each other.

The Chepstow factory is now operating on a two shift, 24-hours a day basis while project management is taking place in Bristol.

Mr Rowell said: "The reason that we have merged is that the major competition in the UK, in fact throughout Europe, was Bristol- based Architen and we together realised that we have very complementary strengths - where we were strong in one area they weren't so strong and vice versa.

"I have just finished a sabbatical away from the business and during that time I realised that Landrell was genuinely too small to be big and too big to be small we were just falling between two stools.

"There was to be a struggle to get out of that and the merger has taken us out of that in a single leap."

Mr Rowell said he is currently searching for a site to locate the whole business but in the meantime it is operating across two centres.

"We have to get onto one site as currently at both sites we are bursting at the seams. "It is only in the last couple of days that we have secured a contract in Chile for a structure and we are working in the USA and Taiwan.

""We really were a little small to play in the world stage in the past but this merger has changed all that and we are now welcoming growth that will happen in the next year or so.

"We do expect to be taking on more staff and to see turnover grow three fold in the next three years from its current £9.5m.

"We are not selling widgets.

"The sort of projects that we can now handle are several million pounds in one lump which can make an impressive difference to the turnover figures - you only need a few of those to make a real difference.

"We have been frightened of these large projects in the past, which have perhaps been snapped up by the Americans or Japanese, but not any more."