Merger announced today!

At 9am today, on Friday 30th September, it was announced that Crusader Displays and Crusader Plastics were to merge forming one single company providing a single source to all retail and creative point of sale design solutions. The new company will officially start trading on the 1st October 2005 under the full company name of Crusader Displays Limited.

The new company, which will be trading from one central location in Manchester, has created a design and manufacturing team with more experience of designing for a wider range of clients’ utilising a broader range of materials. Previously, Crusader Displays primarily manufactured display equipment using timber, glass acrylic and alloys whilst crusader plastics focused mainly on plastic based solutions. Crusader Displays Limited is now able to offer clients the design and production of display equipment utilising the full spectrum of materials commercially available.

Crusader Displays Limited will have a combined annual turnover in the region of £3.5M employ 60 staff and boasts a total of nearly 80 years design and manufacturing experience with an impressive list of national and international clients including household names such as Halfords, Boots and Specsavers.

The merger will also enable the group to exploit the markets previously covered by the original two companies separately. Crusader Displays traditionally focused on major retail clients and original brand manufacturers whilst Crusader Plastics had developed a niche including working with some of the countries leading advertising, marketing and design companies, architects and government bodies.

The merger comes at an excellent time as Crusader Displays had only recently launched Pharmashelve, its first ever branded retail storage unit targeting the pharmacy market, and won sizable new contracts with Halfords on a range of new product launches. Pharmashelve has created an enormous amount of media coverage and customer interest including on-going talks with one of the worlds largest supermarket chains.

Steve Turner, director for Crusader said “As markets get bigger and the whole economy moves global, customers at every level are expecting to use one source for all their requirements and our market is no different” Steve continued “bringing the two companies together ensures we can offer a very wide solution to our clients at the same time reducing costs further by the implementation of one lean manufacturing objective across the company. The result for our clients will be more choice, higher quality, even better design and yet at the same time, even better value for money. For us, it will make us a more focused company and allow us to continue our growth over the next 40 years”

Crusader is now looking further ahead with ambitious plans to target directly the UK’s top 200 retail companies with the complete product offering and more branded display and storage solutions are in the pipeline