With 65 years of operation behind it, recently rebranded Jenkins Fabrications has plenty of experience to draw on as the Falkirk-based company moves into 2023 with refreshed confidence.
“The company was established in 1958 by my grandfather, John Jenkins, when he started out operating from a small workshop carrying out maintenance for the Council, as well as manufacturing gates and carrying out other general blacksmith work,” explains Jonny Jenkins, Managing Director. “In the early 1970s my dad joined the company, at which point it started to grow organically via word of mouth with ever larger contracts being taken on. Eventually the business moved into the housebuilding sector, providing steelwork ranging from fencing through to architectural and structural metalwork.”
When Jonny Jenkins joined the company 13 years ago, he was keen to for its forward progression to continue. This proved to be the case, which provided the impetus for the recent rebrand, as he outlines: “We decided on a rebrand as the business had changed so markedly since my dad retired around five years ago. We’ve brought in a lot of new systems and IT software, as have really upped the volume of work we’re undertaking. As we’re in our 65th year, we felt it made a lot of sense to rebrand as Jenkins Fabrications and really focus on what we can offer to our customers. We don’t want to forget our history and our heritage – far from it – but we do want to look to the future and build further on our excellent standing within the marketplace.
“The preparations for the rebrand began in earnest around six months ago, so it’s great that we were able to finish the process by the end of the year. This meant we were able to come back in January refreshed and ready to go. We’re really happy with how it has all come together and we’re looking forward to the impact it will have.
“We have 28 employees and we’re becoming increasingly focused on building their skills. For instance, we’ve now created a new training and development role for our foreman to make sure all our staff have the right set of skills they need. Our people are our Number One priority. This is all the more important given the wider skills shortage that we’re seeing within the industry at the moment. This also helps to instill loyalty in our workforce, as it shows we’re fully committed to them as we develop as a business.”
As befits a company with such commitment to its own people, Jenkins Fabrications also has an enviable customer base that includes many of the leading housebuilders and some of the major construction companies. “We ensured that all our customers were kept in the loop regarding the rebrand,” says Jonny. “Many were involved in our big launch day and Paul Sheerin, the Chief Executive of Scottish Engineering, did an official opening. It gave us a chance to reflect on how far we’d come but also provided the opportunity to look ahead.
“We cover the whole of Scotland and are ideally located in the central belt. Our products do end up in the north of England too, albeit not directly, and we do have aspirations to move further south in due course.
“We had an exceptionally busy 12 months in 2022 and this was a continuation of an upward trend that has seen us double our turnover in the past three years. For this financial year we’re about to see further growth of 40 per cent on top of that. Our business is rapidly growing and there is still plenty of work out there in both housebuilding and general construction, so we’re very confident that we can keep that level going and repeat our strong figures from last year in 2023.”
With many years of solid development behind it, which has helped to build a loyal customer base, Jenkins Fabrications’s rebrand will only serve to provide the company with an even stronger foundation on which to build in the next 12 months and beyond.