H&C News meets with suppliers regularly to keep up to date with the latest product and service innovations, aiming to get the inside track on what companies offer to the market and how it is delivered.
This week, we met with Max Adam, Sales and Marketing Director of RP Adam Ltd (Arpal Group) at their offices in Selkirk to gain a better understanding of the business.
RP Adam Ltd (Arpal Group) is a fourth generation family-owned company and is a leading manufacturer of professional cleaning and disinfection products with a global market presence operating in the UK and across the Middle East. The business was founded in 1891 and this year celebrates its 125th anniversary.
Family First
We are a fourth generation family business that started in the Scottish borders and has established itself as an international brand with operations in the UK and the Middles East.
The company began in 1891 when my great-grandfather set up as a sole trader manufacturing ammonia and bleaching agents for the local textile industry in Galashiels.
Since then, through the pioneering approach of my grandfather and father, we’ve evolved and expanded the business into a limited company, moving away from textiles and into the industrial and institutional sectors.
With an illustrious 125 year history as manufacturers in the UK and 40 years across the Middle East, we are a confident and credible provider of top quality products with a strong reputation for excellent customer service.
One of the advantages of having such an established pedigree in our industry is that we understand our customers’ needs and we know how to meet those needs. Attention to quality and service is a core element of the Arpal brand and remains central to our vision for the future. Our customer centric approach starts at the top with our senior management team, who have worked together for more than 20 years, through to our engineers and customer representatives working in the field.
Competent, Credible, Capable
Today the UK company deals primarily through a national and regional distributor network, which supplies end user businesses with everything from glass and dishwasher solutions, to housekeeping and domestic services products, laundry detergents, floor cleaners and hand sanitizers.
Our core market sectors include:
- Restaurants & Bars
- Contract Catering
- Hotels & Leisure
- Residential Health Care
- Outsourcing & Contractors
- Public Sector
- Foodservice & Janitorial Distributors
To ensure that our products and systems are compliant the company is registered to ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 14001:2004 for quality and environmental management standards. Our technical department also constantly reviews its processes and keeps abreast of changes in European legislation governing the chemicals industry. All of this means RP Adam’s customers can be confident of robust supply chain security.
When choosing to use our commercial grade cleaning chemicals, customers know they are dealing with a reputable cleaning chemical supplier. They have the comfort of knowing that the products are fit for purpose, manufactured responsibly and comply with the law.
However, Arpal Group is much more than a company simply manufacturing chemical products.
We use our experience and industry insight to create and maintain strong working relationships with customers and distributors that, in many cases, span decades home and abroad.
We also provide practical and online training programmes as well as a dependable response service that helps ensure we are within easy reach of customers and distributors at all times, no matter their size, location or sector.
Service Centric
The Arpal Group has an excellent team approach which helps implement our core objectives and keep the family business ethos running throughout all areas of operation.
In any big family, communication is the key to success which is why we’ve spent time improving our digital interactions between our field sales and service team, head office and clients. Investment in our customer and colleague communication systems is a good example of how we set ourselves apart from the crowd.
For example, in addition to providing cleaning solutions that perform to the highest standards, we also provide customers with a digital tagging system that help manage the efficiency of dispensing units and stock stores.
This enables data to be instantly recorded on tablet software that can be transmitted back to HQ and informs us of which clients need more products or whether any dosing equipment needs repaired or replaced.
We genuinely understand how important it is for our clients to be able to rely on their cleaning products and services, which is why we make it a priority to ensure that our products and the relevant machinery performs consistently and safely. We have a team of 20 Customer Service Representatives and a network of electrical engineers based all over the UK who are trained to take on routine engineering tasks to ensure all dispensing units are functioning correctly, being used in the right way with the correct chemical and the correct dose.
It’s this level of care and attention to how we work with our customers that means we are able to enjoy lasting partnerships that evolve to suit their needs and demands as their own business develops.
Any existing or potential customer really only has to pick up the phone to a member of our team and we can provide a full service package tailored to their needs.
The Future – 2020
This year has been a pivotal point for the Arpal brand as it’s been the second of our five year investment and growth programme which sets out a £20 million turnover target to be reached by 2020.
Our goal ahead of 2020 is to use the experience and talent within the wider Arpal Group family to expand the business at home and abroad by firmly establishing a new modern identity geared to expanding commercial priorities.
These plans are already well underway. So far this year, we’ve invested £400,000 in the expansion of our Selkirk factory which has increased our capacity there by 40% and added in a brand new £100,000 powder plant. This along with increased numbers of sales, service and factory staff means we’re on track to see a rise in annual output to over two million litres, rising by a further 3 million litres over the next four years.
We’re also investing in Arpal Gulf out in Dubai and have recently added a new central warehousing hub and expanded the manufacturing plant there too. All of this means we’re set up on the ground ready to engage with big businesses. New contracts, such as our deal with Etihad Airways, prove we are providing the quality required for this exceptional marketplace and we’re offering more than just good products.
At RP Adam we believe we offer the full package and we pride ourselves on providing solutions in a quick and effective manner. This leaves clients to get on with running their business safe in the knowledge they’re operating within a perfectly clean environment.
The overall growth and expansion of the RP Adam (Arpal Group) is in large part down to the company’s ability to diversify and provide flexible customer solutions, as well as the length of experience in the field. Our Scottish family roots are also a key selling point – especially across the Middle East – providing a trusted platform to expand relationships with other regions and large organisations which value RP Adam’s heritage and ethical standpoint.
H & C News comment
Meeting with Max Adam gave us a fascinating insight to the RP Adam business, which despite its size retains a family culture most especially in customer services, refreshing. RP Adam clearly have a wealth of experience in the manufacture of cleaning and disinfection chemical products for the hospitality and catering sector and their long term success in the Middle East is testimony to the durability of their business. We look forward to reporting regularly on product and service developments and news for the hospitality and catering sector.
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Contact our friendly team by email: salesinfo@rpadam.co.uk
Call us on 01750 23780