ALL staff at a Brierley Hill based manufacturer of round, flat and profile wire are now shareholders thanks to a recently completed management buy-out.

Alloy Wire International (AWI), which has two sites in the West Midlands and Yorkshire, was purchased by directors Tom Mander, Andrew Du Plessis and Adam Shaw in January, with the new management team immediately extending the firm’s Employee Ownership scheme to include all 33 employees.

It has been a long-term commitment that first started in 1999 when Bill Graham fulfilled a 23-year vision of putting staff at the heart of the business by giving them share ownership and the opportunity to benefit from its growth.

The ‘people first’ approach has paid dividends with AWI going from £1m in 2000 to £12.8m at the start of 2022 and sales putting it on course for nearly £18m by the close of the year.

Tom Mander, managing director, said: “There’s a real togetherness across the business, with employees also enjoying a renewed profit share, dividends, and Bupa UK membership.”

Finance director Adam Shaw added: “Employee ownership is a growing trend, but we’ve been doing it for many years.

“Staff feel more tied into the business in a positive way because they are directly rewarded for the work they do, which produces a sense of fairness and, in turn, creates a tighter community amongst employees.”

Alloy Wire International manufactures round, flat and profile wire in more than 60 exotic alloys.

Founded in 1946 by John Stockdale in an old ambulance station in Old Hill, the company’s founding principles of ‘manufacturing quality, delivering reliability’ have stood the test of time.

Today, the firm operates across 15 different market sectors and continues to invest in its stockholding of 400 tonnes of material. Meanwhile, a number of new machines will arrive this year to boost capacity and maintain growing demand.