An engineering company is celebrating a dramatic turnaround in fortunes - with an £8 million leap in orders.

Just four years ago Spooner Industries Ltd in Ilkley had to shed a third of its then 100-strong workforce, blaming the redundancies on the strong pound and high interest rates.

But since then the firm has ploughed £100,000 into modernising its business by buying the equipment needed to give it a competitive edge in the global market.

And this year the approach, which also involved re-training many of its 120 staff, seems to have paid off - with orders up from £6 million in 2001 to £14 million.

Sales and marketing director Steve Newell, while refusing to get carried away, said he was pleased with the results and quietly confident of Spooner enjoying a prosperous New Year.

He said: "In common with many British manufacturers we have suffered from the depressed state of many of our markets and from the strength of sterling against the euro.

"We have responded by expanding our international sales and marketing effort and by running a highly successful World Class Manufacturing programme.

"This has involved a high proportion of the workforce working in teams to identify and address areas of the business requiring improvement. The strategy seems to be working. Our order intake this year has been extraordinary and there are still a huge amount of prospects around.

"We hope the trend will continue in 2003 and the signs are good. We spent between £50,000 and £100,000 on new hardware and training which is a lot of money for an engineering company, but it's what you need to do to stay competitive and successful in the future."

Based in Railway Road, Spooner manufactures ovens and dryers for a range of industries including the paper, metals and food sectors. Started in Ilkley in 1932, the company has changed and uses state-of-the-art 3D Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools.

The new technology means it can complete some tasks in a tenth of the time they would take using a traditional 2D CAD system.

Spooner is also enjoying the rewards of re-entering the food processing business, having bought the intellectual property of Triphase, in Bingley. Its food processing product range now includes ovens, coolers, freezers, and conveyors.

All of its equipment is designed, produced and assembled in Ilkley before being sent to clients both in the UK and, increasingly, across the world. The company is working on contracts for customers in places as far afield as Australia, India, Russia, France and the USA.

e-mail: jim.j@ilkley.newsquest.co.uk