What is Metpro?

Following my last article and having explained exactly what Metpro Group is, the logical next step is to help you understand our two divisions (Metpro, our traditional product offering and Demon Cato, our manufacturing brand) and share some insight into the offerings of each.

I hope you’ll find the content of interest and your feedback is always welcome, both the good and the bad – please feel free to use the comments section below or contact me directly.

So, our first brand, the somewhat confusingly named Metpro. What’s it all about?

Metpro is the brand that services the Electrical Wholesale and Distributor sector. The one which started it all 27 years ago by Arthur Rudge (now our Executive Chairman and still very much involved with the business). Initially established to supply malleable conduit boxes, the business has experienced continuous and sustained growth in terms of the product portfolio, the team, and the physical footprint.

From the humble beginnings of one staff member and stock held in a garage, Metpro now operates from a 60,000sq/ft distribution centre, with circa 60 staff members, and a product portfolio consisting of eight product ranges: Steel Conduit Tube & Accessories, Channel Nuts & Bracketry, Switch & Socket Boxes, Adaptable Boxes and Accessories, Flexible Conduit Tube, Flat Foot, PVC Conduit Accessories, Cable Accessories/Wiring Products, and a growing range of Fixings & Fasteners.

More than just a box shifter

Metpro manufactures and supplies quality products for the built environment and these are sold exclusively to our partner Electrical Wholesalers and Distributors. But there is much more to our offering than simply stock-levels - although this factor has been hugely significant in terms of the growth of the business as I shall now explain.

In-depth stockholding has formed part of Metpro’s ethos since we first opened our doors, a fact which is no less true today. Perhaps the most concrete example of this was during the 2008 global recession. Most suppliers made moves to reduce their stock levels in anticipation of plummeting demand however Metpro chose to do the exact opposite, instead boosting levels to the highest experienced in our history.

Please note that I am acutely aware the subheading above states that Metpro is ‘more than just a box shifter’ and yet so far, I have only focused on, well… shifting boxes. But I feel that this is such an incredibly important point, especially when thinking about the past 18 months, as we have never known such scarcity of product and faced so many logistical challenges.

However, there are other factors which justify the subheading, at least we think so anyway.

Quality Control

Despite concerns regarding the ongoing price inflation and the extremely competitive nature of our market, we firmly believe that costs should never come at the expense of quality. Providing only top-quality products is one of our constant values and a part of the business we have invested heavily in year-on-year.

Beginning in 1995, our initial approach to quality control was through the education and support of our manufacturing partners, many of whom we continue to work with today. At the time of writing (2022), Metpro’s quality control operation consists of a dedicated in-house team working within a state-of-the-art QC laboratory, qualified in-house engineers who are on hand to support the quality team, three directly employed and qualified overseas engineers tasked with ensuring all Metpro products continue to be manufactured correctly on the ground, and ongoing visits to manufacturing facilities by UK-based Metpro staff (unfortunately the pandemic meant these were not possible from 2020 to date).

It's also worth noting that our manufacturing brand, Demon Cato which I'll be covering in a future article, works with an ever-increasing number of OEM customers, producing their bespoke products for use within a wide variety of sectors. These include automotive, oil, gas & petrochemical, construction, and the water industry. Operating within these sectors requires extremely diligent engineering, manufacturing and testing, the processes for which we also apply to our standard product offering under the Metpro banner.

It is the combination of all these factors which ensure that the products sitting on our shelves are fit-for-purpose. When it comes to product quality, we never want our customers to be the final check and through the methodical work carried out by our colleagues, we sincerely feel that this is the case.

As we move further into 2022, we intend to continue with our pre-pandemic plans of building a more expansive quality control laboratory, enabling our team to carry out even more detailed tests and building upon our reputation as a manufacturer and supplier of quality products.

Staff Knowledge

Our colleagues are quite simply the most important part of our business and we’ve been lucky to have very high rates of staff retention. So much so that the collective knowledge of our Metpro team now totals well over 250 years. It is this in-house experience that ensures questions our customers may have are answered quickly and efficiently.

The support offered by our team is not limited to simply product questions. Through regular information sharing, legacy knowledge and personal upskilling sessions, our colleagues are readily available to provide insights and support on the latest market trends, legislative and standards changes as well as technical and installation advice.

The Metpro team are available Monday to Friday, 8.30am to 5pm to answer your queries and they can be contacted on 0121 552 2100 or by email at [email protected]. I would also like to let you know that Metpro has no voicemail system in our offices. We firmly believe that our customers deserve a personal service, so when we receive incoming calls, a suitably qualified person will always answer.

Pick Accuracy

The sales and quality teams are not the only factors involved in providing such an effective service to our customers. If our goods are not available and delivered on time, we wouldn’t have any customers to answer queries for.

This is where our logistics & warehouse team come in. Over the past 26 years, we have always looked at our internal processes to understand how we can continually improve our offering. A key factor has been the pick accuracy of our warehouse operatives. Through regular and ongoing reviews, we take time to gather information, identify data patterns and adjust within our distribution centre to mitigate any repeating issues. We also ensure the levels of personal reward of our employees reflects our desire for ‘on time in full deliveries’.

It is a combination of both the large and small changes we have made in the past, and continue to review today, that have enabled us to maintain over 99.8% pick accuracy year-on-year since 2012, even in the face of significant growth and the more recent challenges posed by coronavirus.

Metpro Online

Moving away from the physical landscape, the digital world has been growing at an incredible pace since the world wide web was first launched. The coronavirus pandemic has only accelerated the shift to online, even within our more traditional marketplace.

We have always understood that the requirement for a digital service offering was only ever going to increase and so we were delighted to launch our first eCommerce platform in October 2020; Metpro Online.

Designed first and foremost to be a tool for our customers, this platform offers more than simply somewhere to place your orders. Metpro Online provides users with ‘real time’ stock availability - an essential piece of information, particularly in the current environment. Beyond this, users are also able to review key technical information, download data sheets and BIM files, as well as access our Knowledge Centre containing the latest news and insights from Metpro and the industry. Our wholesaler customers can also gain access to their bespoke pricing and order history with a dedicated Metpro Online account.

So far, this platform has been a tremendous success with our regular users, the number of which continues to grow each month. Following initial feedback to the look and feel, we also launched our brand-new design in January 2021, offering a more streamlined and user-friendly experience.

If you are a wholesaler and would like to set up your account today, please contact our team on 0121 552 2100 or at [email protected] who will always be happy to help. If you are not a wholesaler but would still like to see our live stock levels or access technical information, there’s no need for an account. Simply head to www.metpro.co.uk to find what you need.

Conclusion

In writing this, I have tried to really focus on the key elements which we feel make us more than just a box shifter and I hope that this message has been conveyed.

If you’d like to learn more about Metpro and how we can support your business, please do not hesitate to get in touch either directly with myself, with our in-house team on 0121 552 2100 or by email at [email protected].

Metpro | Quality products for the Built Environment

www.metpro.co.uk