Nine-year old IBM clone maker and peripherals distributor the Akhter Group Plc has had a particularly busy two months. Essentially, the Harlow, Essex-based company has decided to reorganise itself into two separate divisions, and has created a new company, Microsales Distribution Ltd – complete with a new management team – to handle its distribution operation. In order to service what Akhter’s recently-recruited managing director David Nuttall describes as the growing sophistication and service demands of the dealer market the new company has also decided to go multi-site, and scatter its 55-strong workforce around the country. Alongside its Harlow headquarters, service and training centres, Microsales will operate from Central London office and warehouse, a Shrewsbury-based software and hardware training centre, and hopes to move a least half its existing staff to a UKP1m custom-built site in Burnley by the beginning of next year. Long-term, the company estimates that some 80 staff will be based in the North West site, chosen for its excellent road communications, high-calibre staff-poaching potential thanks to the likes of nearby P&P, Micro Peripherals and MBS and five years worth of enterprise zone rate waiving. On the strength of these developments – all, apparently funded from within the company – significant new deals have been signed. Microsales will now add Citizen Europe’s range of matrix and laser printers, Hitachi plotters, Accodata’s computer accesories – anything from anti-static sprays to computer furniture – and Miracom’s data communications products to its franchised product portfolio. The Korean electronics group, Hyundai, has also signed the company up as the first UK distributor of its range of all-metal, low power consumption MS-DOS micros. Nuttall also indicated that upmarket if unspecified new developments will shortly be announced by the manufacturing arm of the company, which will continue to operate under the Akhter Computers Ltd name. Overall, Nuttall anticipates that group profits – which he aims to double within a year – will be split fairly evenly between to the two companies; last year the group saw profits of UKP700,000 on a turnover of UKP10.5m.
