Leeds business man Neill Summerfield, who specialises in reducing expenditure within manufacturing companies, has saved International Automotive Engineering Group Finnveden Bulten £165,177 after being employed by the Scunthorpe based company to challenge their business costs as the automotive sector was affected by the recession.

Barnsley born Neill Summerfield operates the Leeds franchise of Expense Reduction Analysts, and has recently completed his 200th project on behalf of clients, delivering an incredible £4m in cost reductions to date.

He began working with the UK Finnveden Bulten operation, which is a full service provider (FSP) to Ford and Nissan with an extensive range of metallic fasteners for use in chassis and engine manufacture, three years ago, as the automotive industry faced challenging times through the recession.

The sector's demand for year on year cost reduction from their supplies places challenges on component supply companies, such as Finnveden Bulten, to sustain profitability to invest in future product development, which is why the UK team contacted Neill Summerfield.

Having worked with the group for the last three years, Neill has saved them a grand total of £165,177 broken down as follows:
£5,871 (30%) in office supplies
£64,896 (51%) in labels
£31,812(19%) in cartons
£6,771 (9%) in pallets
£3,936 (7%) in  bags
£4,860 (12%) in sundries
£8,175 (19%) in gas
£10,245 (28%) in electricity
A further £28,611 in labels with a new supplier to the market

Richard Dixon, Financial Director of Finnveden, said: “We believe that all business costs should be challenged on a regular basis and we were therefore keen to investigate our cost base in more detail. We felt that by engaging Expense Reduction Analysts we could access a unique wealth of knowledge and market expertise to enable us to identify profit leaks and profit improvement opportunities within our overhead expenditure and utilise Neill's unrivalled buying influence to secure improved prices and service levels.

“We are extremely satisfied with both the process followed and the results achieved by Expense Reduction Analysts. Neill kept us informed at every stage and made the benchmarking, tendering, recommendation and implementation phases completely transparent.”

Neill works with clients across a range of sectors including charity, retail, wholesale and distribution, financial and legal services and construction. He has an average of 23.6% savings across all his clients.

Neill said: “The manufacturing sector, particularly in the automotive industry, has been hit hard during the global recession. Organisations have been trying to cut costs, often without sufficient expertise and resource to achieve significant and sustainable reductions. At Expense Reduction Analysts we forensically examine 'profit leaks' and have the current industry knowledge at our fingertips bringing an aggregated buying influence greater than any individual business.

“Over the last three years I've built a lasting relationship with the UK team at Finnveden and have generated fantastic results, in particular with packaging, to dramatically reduce the company's costs.”

More information on Expense Reduction Analysts can be found at expense-reduction.co.uk.

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