A GLOBAL company specialising in baby and make-up wipes which started life in the dining room of a Coventry home is expanding.
EcoTech (Europe) Ltd supplies the likes of Emirates Airline, the Royal Palaces and the five-star luxury hotel group, the Jumeirah Group.
It was launched by Paul Brownhill and his wife, Hazel, from their home in Tile Hill back in 1997.
And 17 years later the business on Falkland Close on Charter Avenue Industrial Estate has bought a €120,000 Kansan Flo-pak filling line machine with the help of a £31,000 grant from the government-funded Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership.
The state-of-the-art machine, which produces 100 packs of baby wipes and feminine hygiene wipes per minute, is part of a €500,000 investment which includes film plates for the machine and re-fitting the 30,000sq ft premises and adding a plastic-coated ceiling and walls and special lighting to comply with industry regulations.
Four new members of staff are also to be added to increase the workforce to 28.
“This is a new chapter for the company.” said Paul, who previously worked for Johnson & Johnson.
“We started in our dining room in December 1997 by buying and selling and when we outgrew the garage two years later, we moved to 10,000 sq ft premises in Templar Avenue, Tile Hill, and we moved to Falkland Close in 2002 when we started manufacturing.
“We now have 16 production lines and have just employed four more staff so this is a really exciting time.
“Our business plan is to target the retail sector and it means we can now produce baby wipes and feminine hygiene wipes to sell to a professional distributor to target companies such as Boots, Superdrug, Lakeland and Amazon as well as through our own website.”
Coun Ann Lucas, the leader of Coventry City Council and a member of the enterprise partnership’s board, added: “EcoTech is a fantastic example of a business which is successfully exporting its British-made goods across the world as well as in the UK in a developing sector.”
