Cookstown based Trade Mouldings, one of the UK’s largest manufacturers and distributors of MDF wrapped mouldings and vinyl wrapped cabinet doors, has hosted a visit from the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, Dr. Ben Broadbent.

Dr. Broadbent’s visit was part of the Bank’s information gathering strategy to better understand current trade conditions facing companies across the UK and included discussions on how Brexit is shaping the company’s decision-making process, investment levels and business growth.

Commenting on the visit, Conor McOscar, Trade Moulding’s Managing Director said: “We were delighted to welcome Dr. Broadbent to discuss our trade concerns and share with him the significant investments we’ve made recently across our three sites here in Cookstown, Dublin and Manchester in the run up to our 35th anniversary.”

“Trade Mouldings, is a second-generation family business started by Kevin McOscar in 1982 and is now a considerable player in the Mid Ulster economy.

“We employ 150 people and operate from a 10 acre site, with 200,000ft of manufacturing space in Cookstown and our company now makes in excess of 30,000 doors and 75,000 linear meters of wrapped mouldings per week,” he said.

Austin McOscar, Trade Moulding’s Production Director said: “Last summer we invested one million pounds in our Cookstown facility, adding new machinery in order to increase our capacity and earlier this year we invested an additional million pounds on new stock lines. We have distribution sites in Manchester to service the UK market and a new €1.5m state of the art Dublin depot, to service the ROI market.

Damien Connolly, Trade Moulding’s Sales Director continued “Our business is currently experiencing double-digit growth, with 85% of sales outside of Northern Ireland. Our export markets are mainly on the mainland UK and in ROI, however our contracts span as far afield as The Middle East and Central America.

“We have a global supply chain, throughout Europe and the Far East, so a hard Brexit would be detrimental to business if it results in restrictions in regulations and an increase in tariffs.

“Like all NI manufacturing companies relying on export we advised that we want to see minimal barriers to trade, so that the market keeps growing. Because Northern Ireland is the only region to share a land border with the EU we voiced our concerns about the re-implementation of restrictive customs controls that have existed in the past, restrictions to and the cost of market access and we are anxious about the movement of people, as our headcount includes employees from a range of European countries.

“The ROI market has finally bounced back with lots of demand for housing stock in both Ireland and the UK. These houses all need fitted kitchens and with the contract market being a substantial percentage of what we do, business should be good for the next few years,” he added.