CEA (Construction Equipment Association) Member Ashtree Glass wins a Queens Award for Enterprise – International Trade

Ashtree Glass is an approved supplier of mirrors and mirror arms to many of the leading names in construction machinery throughout Europe, including Hydrema, JCB, JLG, Komatsu, Leibherr, Sennebogen, Terex and Wacker Neuson.
Ashtree Glass is delighted to have been awarded a Queens Award for Enterprise for International Trade (export).
The official citation was as follows: The Company wins the Award for the first time for its outstanding achievement in export sales growth, achieving an 86% growth in overseas earnings. Ashtree Glass maintains a competitive edge by cutting its own mirror glasses, instead of buying them in as most of its competitors do. As a niche manufacturer, Ashtree operates a strategy that concentrates on its strengths, which are supplying competitively priced high quality products and flexibility in designing and manufacturing what the customer requires, opening new markets and consolidating others.
John Roper, Ashtree’s sales director said, “We are delighted to have received the award and also relieved we can shout about it! There was an embargo for several weeks before the awards were announced and it’s quite ironic that on the day the Queens awards were announced we were overseas at Intermat, exhibiting in the CEA’s UK pavilion, looking to further increase export business.”
Mr Roper continued, “We made a conscious decision in 1992 to export and decided that this was the way forward to widen our customer base. Exhibitions allow us to get in front of potential customers. We offer a ‘bespoke’ products and solutions and only by talking to people can we successfully get this across.
We have exhibited under the CEA umbrella at many overseas shows such as Bauma and Intermat and the association has been genuinely great for us and incredibly helpful. The CEA also has a great team of people that get things done! Bauma is our best overseas show, although Intermat is good too – I am meeting with a customer from Japan this morning who visited our stand at Intermat last week. We are also thinking of exhibiting in the CEA’s UK pavilion at Conexpo in Vegas in 2014.”

Ashtree’s managing director is Alan Roper, who founded the business in 1977, and he has been at the forefront of developing company policy. This policy has been taken up with enthusiasm by the 2nd generation of the Roper family to be involved in the business. Since export business was first sought in 1992, with a less than successful debut at the Automechanika show in Frankfurt, Ashtree has developed a product range and export strategy that now sees in excess of 40% of company turnover going overseas. As well as creating and securing jobs in the UK manufacturing sector these exports are also good for the UKs balance sheet as Ashtree export far more than they import.
 
Source: CEA News Room