A management team has saved the jobs of 26 workers at a West Midlands door and panel manufacturer by taking over the business, it was revealed today.

The three man team at Halesowen based Midland Veneers bought the company from owners Premdor Inc of Ontario, Canada for an undisclosed sum.

The new owners now plan to double the company’s annual sales within 3 years and create small number of new jobs.

Operations will shortly move from the company’s present site in Hayseech Road, Halesowen to a 20,000sq.ft refurbished factory in nearby Folkes Road.

Managing director John Goode, together with directors Clive Chatterton and David Vickery, began the buy-out process in June when Midland Veneers -  a specialist manufacturer of veneered doors and paneling – was owned by door manufacturer Crosby Ltd, part of the Spring Ram group.  Spring Ram then sold Crosby to Premdor and buy0out negotiations continued with the new Canadian owners.

Mr Goode said:  “We began negotiations to buy the business because we were told we did not fit in with Crosby’s volume door manu-facturing operations and were concerned that the Halesowen operation would be shut and the workforce made redundant.”

“Then Crosby was sold to Premdor and that put our negotiations on hold for about six weeks.  We feared that Premdor would also want to close us down, and so we resumed talks.  The buy-out means that none of our employees will now be made redundant.”

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