Flowcrete’s first major overseas success was a £2 million order for 250,000 square metres of floor in the terminal of Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok airport

Flowcrete is going with the environmental flow

SENTINEL, 2000

Chairman Dawn Gibbins has an ambition to cover the world – or a good part of it – with her Flowcrete company’s surfacing products.

And having launched an export drive only a little over a year, she’s well on her way.

Flowcrete has already won more than £2 million pounds worth of first year orders and has opened manufacturing plants in the Czech Republic and Malaysia.

It has since won another £1.5 million export order, set-up a Hong Kong company to exploit the potentially enormous Chinese market, is to open offices in Thailand, the Phillippines and on the Indian and South American continents.

Riding such a tiger the former Sentinel Business woman of the Year has no hesitation in entering her Sandbach-based company for the North Staffordshire Chamber of Commerce Industry a sponsored Export Achievement Award.

Ms Gibbins, MBE sees exporting as the key to further major expansion.

“In 1990 we turned over £300,000, last year £10 million and I’m looking for £25 million in 2001”.

Launched by Ms Gibbins, and her late father Peter Gibbins, 15 years ago, Flowcrete majors in both industrial floor finishes and self levelling materials used to “screed” (create the flat floor surface beneath the carpets) in offices and similar buildings and has recently launched a range of surfaces for car parks.

Flowcrete’s first major overseas success was a £2 million order for 250,000 square metres of floor in the terminal of Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok airport.  London’s airports already have Flowcrete floors.  This led to setting up a subsidiary company in the former colony.  That was followed by a £1.5 million order for the new terminal building of Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur airport.

The contract stipulated that at least 60 per cent of the product had to be produced locally, so Ms Gibbins set up a joint-venture Malaysian manufacturing company.

Today, in the UK Flowcrete – which employs 120 people – has five full time research chemists.

In their early days, as a team the Gibbins father and daughter duo used  their chemistry expertise to solve technical flooring problems for other companies before launching Flowcrete.

“It’s what helps make us good at what we do.  We produce the best products and provide the technical expertise and training to assist contractors in getting the best from them”.

Long-term research and development has enabled the company to launch, in the past few days, a water based product range which should be both easier to use and have an environmental edge.