Jerome Hoffarth (left) with Matthew Baldwin — the pair will spearhead the new Northern Industrial operation in Germany

Blackburn-based Northern Industrial, founded over 40 years ago, exports industrial spare parts and repair services to manufacturing and engineering companies around the world. The company provided a spare parts and repair services to over 4,000 companies in 2021 alone.

To help meet strong demand for its products and services, Northern Industrial has opened a new facility in Herten, northern Germany, which will focus on servicing customers in the European Union (EU), while the UK operation focuses on the rest of the world, including the Americas from its other site in Mexico.

The new German operation is being launched by Matthew Baldwin and Jerome Hoffarth with support from the head office in the UK. Mr Baldwin, who previously worked for Northern Industrial in Blackburn before moving to Germany three years ago, will manage technical services while Mr Hoffarth will manage sales.

Northern Industrial managing director David Lenehan said: “Germany has the largest industrial economy in Europe, which makes it the obvious location to open our first European site outside of the UK. The new location will help us deliver spare parts that EU customers urgently require as quickly as possible.

“Going forward, the plan is that Germany will be the central hub for the EU, while our site in Mexico primarily services the Americas, allowing Blackburn to focus on the UK and the rest of the world.”

He added: “We are particularly pleased to welcome Matthew back to the company and to see him spearhead this new venture alongside Jerome and we are confident they will be able to build an EU-based operation to rival our existing UK operation.”

Mr Baldwin said: “We are immensely proud and excited to be launching Northern Industrial in Germany as a central hub for the European Union. A recent global study showed the majority of companies across the world have experienced at least one unplanned period of downtime over the previous three years, costing an average $260,000 an hour across all businesses.

“The Vanson Bourne global study, sponsored by ServiceMax, from go.digital.ge.comGE Digital, surveyed 450 companies in the UK, the USA, France and Germany across the manufacturing, medical, oil and gas, energy and utilities, telecoms, distribution, logistics and transport sectors.

“As well as estimating downtime losses to average $2 million per year for 82% of businesses, it also concluded that around 70% of companies lack full awareness of when their equipment is due for maintenance, upgrade or replacement.”

Northern Industrial holds over £10 million of stock at any one time, covering over 200,000 parts numbers, sourced from over 1,350 manufacturers. As well as providing new replacement parts from manufacturers including Control Techniques, Beijer, Allen Bradley, Danfoss and Pixsys, the company specialises in providing obsolete spare parts and repair solutions primarily for industrial equipment and production lines no longer supported by OEMs.

Its specialist buying department sources and refurbishes obsolete parts from around the world, which are then sold via its website and customer service team, with express distribution world-wide.

Northern Industrial also recently launched a new division dedicated to the recovery and refurbishment of semiconductors in response to the global semiconductor shortage.

The company celebrated its sixth successive year of growth in 2021, with a 20% increase in sales compared to the previous year.