Custom Heat plumbing and heating achieves 56 per cent growth

Published by

Nicky Godding

Rugby plumbing and heating specialist Custom Heat has increased its turnover by 56 per cent during its last financial year. Established in 1980 in Rugby, Custom Heat has expanded significantly over the last five years, but its latest results are the best yet.

In the last 12-months, Custom Heat has expanded its service area to the wider Midlands and has also branched out south into the Cotswolds. It has also strengthened its three-year-old partnership with Worcester Bosch as one of the boiler manufacturer’s UK Accredited Service Partners – a move that follows a similar affiliation with British Gas made earlier this year.

Lincoln Smith, Managing Director of Custom Heat, said: “Our 56 per cent growth during 12 months is a wonderful achievement for us. We have worked hard to grow at a steady and sustainable pace, moving into new counties and areas as well as concentrating on building great business relationships.”

The company employs 140 people, including 14 apprentices and forecasts that 50 more engineer roles and 10 office jobs will be created before 2023.

Lincoln, who took over the family business twelve years ago, puts Custom Heat’s achievements down in part to using the latest, integrated technologies. He explains: “I have always been interested in what the cloud can do as well as how technology can create efficiencies that manual processes never could, so when it was time for the business to push forward with its long-term growth plans in 2016, we strategically centred on such solutions. I hate the idea of a customer or staff member not being happy so I asked myself, ‘how can tech help with that?’."

In 2016, as Custom Heat migrated to integrated financials and operations cloud-software they were servicing approximately 400 customers in Warwickshire a month with 27 vehicles. Today, as the firm services a wide geographical area across the Midlands and occasionally beyond – for customers such as Windsor Castle – the figure is circa 7,000 and 92 Custom Heat vans can be found on the roads travelling to and from homes and businesses.

Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe. After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts. She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.