Industry4 Ltd
Registered Office
- 4IR.UK British Systems
- Unit 12, 44 Springfield Road
- Poole
- BH14 0LQ
- United Kingdom
- Email: hello@4IR.UK
- Tel: +44 7837 196442
Background
4IR.UK British Systems is a trading name of Industry4 Ltd.
Registered in England & Wales as 10014834.
Co-Founded in 2016 as INDUSTRY4.UK by David Graham and Julian Singh. The business was renamed to 4IR.UK in 2017.
Yearly reports are issued between February and November.
Directors Report
The company’s principal activity during the period was the sale and support of the SMEMA Hermes Adaptor and the SMEMA Ethernet Adaptor which are used within Electronic Assembly factories worldwide.
During the period we secured 13 new customers with 2 repeat orders from the previous period. 7 of these customers reordered within the period. The value of the orders have substantially increased as forecasted while our products are used on multiple production lines within the same manufacturing factory. There is also a growth of organic recommendations of our products between customer manufacturing facilities around the world.
Our products now operate in 20 countries. We continue to work with eCommerce business Smart Factory Direct as our main product distributor and a small segment of sales are occurring via unofficial European and Asian distributors who have existing relationships with their customer base.
The Value Added Tax situation stated during the previous period report still exists and so material costs reflex it. We are currently onboarding our first member of staff to support the final assembly of the products.
During the period we attended Productronica ‘23 in Munich during November, this also featured the 12th Hermes Standard Initiative Meeting.
We also attended IPC WinterCom '24 at the end of January in Barcelona. This was to improve our relationship with the IPC CFX 2-17a Task Group as we secured a UK Government match fund to develop the SMEMA CFX Adaptor which has a target prototype completion date of December '24.
We still have not conducted any direct marketing or advertising but aim to target the OEM market where our solutions will be embedded into other suppliers products. To date all operations are currently loss making.
The company’s principal activity during the period was the sale and support of the SMEMA Hermes Adaptor and the SMEMA Ethernet Adaptor which are used within Electronic Assembly factories worldwide.
During the period we secured 12 new international customers with 1 repeat order. Writing this report during September 2023 I can pre report that many of these customers made repeat orders after the period and the order book looks strong.
We continue to work with eCommerce business Smart Factory Direct as our main product distributor and will be agreeing new wholesale prices in the next period so this is likely to reflect in the next period’s balance sheet.
The business is not currently VAT registered and so we are having to pass the cost of us paying VAT for our materials to our customers. All our customers are currently international and so would be treated as zero rated and so we expect our costs to lower as soon as we become VAT registered and are able to claim back the VAT that our suppliers charge us. This may be reflected in the next period.
At the end of the period we attended IPC Apex Expo in San Diego and both Adaptors were well received with the American customer base.
Due to the projection of sales of this period we have agreed the repayment of a R&D loan of £6,777 to be made over the next period. To date all operations are currently loss making.
Fundraising
| Date | Type | Awarded By | Amount £ GBP | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Grant | Creative England | 25,000 | Repayable after £100,000 revenue |
| 2018 | Loan | Director | 6,777 | Repaid |
| 2019 | Match Fund | EU ESIF | 9,278 | |
| 2021 | Grant | Dorset Growth Hub | 1,000 | |
| 2023 | Match Fund | UKSPF | 5,000 |
Between 2017 and 2023 the business was bootstrapped and the Director withdrew no salary from the business. The director took a part time weekend night employment for 2 days a week at John Lewis PLC.
Team
| Name | Appointed | Resigned | Notable Career |
|---|---|---|---|
| David Graham | 19 February 2016 | Technical Specialist Software Engineer at DEK Printing Machines Ltd | |
| Julian Singh | 25 June 2016 | 22 May 2017 | Account Manager for Intel Corporation at DEK Printing Machines Ltd |
Julian acted as the interim Business Development Manager during the business accelerator programme.