ERIKS goodbye to Wyko

London - The entire Wyko organisation is to be rebranded under the banner of ERIKS UK from 1 April - reflecting Dutch group’s ERIKS £139-million acquisition of the company back in November 2006.

Wyko, which currently trades as Wyko an ERIKS company is well known in the UK but not in continental Europe, where ERIKS claims a dominant position. The UK company includes well known names such as Fenner, Pioneer Weston and Revolvo, which will continue to exist as product brands within ERIKS UK, said a company spokesman.

“If we hadn’t become part of ERIKS we would have been rebranding Wyko anyway as it was made up of so many different parts,” said Steve Bodsworth, marketing director of Wyko /ERIKS at a 1 Feb press conference. “If you go around Wyko sites today you will still see the names of many different acquisition companies.”

The rebranding exercise is part of a business strategy which will shift Wyko’s current heavy focus on Maintenance Repair and Operations (MRO) to providing more specialised OEM solutions, continued Bodsworth. The vision, he said, is to achieve a 60/40 balance between the two activities — though still in favour of MRO.

The marketing executive listed apprenticeships among a series of other initiatives being planned for ERIKS UK. Noting that apprenticeships had become a “dying breed” in much of UK industry, Bodsworth said the company was aiming for "succession planning from the bottom up."  Wyko/ERIKS, he added, aims to increase its current complement of 15 apprentices to 100 in the future. The challenge he said was “to find the right people, aged 16 or 17 who want to do something different.”

ERIKS is a Dutch holding company for a group of technical distribution companies. The combined ERIKS/ Wyko will have annual sales of around Euro850 million (£635 million) and 4200 employees. It will be the clear European market leader supplying engineering components and the related technical and logistics services, claims ERIKS.

Wyko, based in Halesowen near Birmingham, supplies engineering components and related technical and logistics services to the maintenance market. The £240-million-turnover company employs around 2000.

Wyko, which was founded over 40 years ago, has grown rapidly in recent years, mainly through acquiring local distributors and specialised manufacturers. Its main component is Wyko Industrial Services (WIS), a £218-million-turnover, engineering and distribution organisation with110 branch operations and 103 ‘insites’ within customers.

Another key unit, Wyko Industrial Distribution (WID) has 80 branch operations, 18 customer insites and 660 employees, offers products and services to the MRO market. WID realises external sales of around £100 million.

Wyko Electro Mechanical Engineering Services (WEMS), meanwhile, has about 30 branch operations, some of which are shared with WID, and 548 employees, this unit realises sales of £35 million. WEMS activities include the repairing of electric motors, pumps, gear boxes and electronics as well as condition monitoring services.

The company lists its Wyko Integrated Solutions unit as its fast growing activity with external sales of about £70 million and 300 employees. The business provides services in-house to customers with a generally small team of 3 to 5 employees.

Wyko also operates four specialised companies are part of WYKO. These develop, manufacture and sell a number of specific technical components under their own brand names:

- Rencol (sales £8.0 million) This company with operations in the UK and Malaysia develops and manufactures a range of tolerance rings for applications in the automotive and computer industry.

- Revolvo (sales £2.5 million) This company develops and manufactures a range of specialised bearings and supplies them to industrial end users and distributors.

- Wyko Tire Technology (sales £9.0 million) With manufacturing operations in Great Britain and the USA, tooling is developed and manufactured for the global tire industry.

- Pioneer Weston (sales £2.5 million) This company develops and manufactures a range of mechanical rotary axle seals.