MAIN HEAD Lilley and Gillie www.lilleyandgillie.co.uk 804 words UK charts supplier Lilley and Gillie has achieved a 45 per cent growth in business revenues over the past 12 months. Since being appointed managing director following a company takeover in June 2002, Graham Knight has focussed more on improving the products; under the previous ownership, the company did not even have a design department. Now it has a good design team. The company is also moving from traditional analogue products to electronic. Mr Knight acknowledges that it is very hard making marine compasses special; often the manufacturing business comes down to keeping costs down. "So long as it passes the right legislation and has the right price, shipyards will buy it," he says. "The selling force of a compass isn't more than it was when I joined the company in 1988." Now it has revamped the Walker Marine products, the company will next work on its Chernikeeff range speed logs, also originally produced by Walkers, and then the Lilley and Gillie navigation products. Mr Knight has also tightened up the company's commercial approach, so it can respond faster to customers and has someone to answer phone calls every 24 hours. Mr Knight stresses that the company's overall objective is not to supply charts and equipment at the cheapest price, but reduce the total running costs, including keeping charts up to date, backup services and equipment service, as much as possible. "That's the objective the shipowner is looking for," he says. SUBHEAD Charts Lilley's main business is providing a paper chart management service for ships. It makes sure that ships have all the necessary charts and updates delivered to them, to satisfy the most demanding vetting inspectors and port state control inspectors. It now claims to be the second largest chart supplier in the world, after Kelvin Hughes, supplying mainly British Admiralty Charts, US charts and IMO publications. Lillie has developed an online system for chart outfit management, which ship superintendents can log onto, to monitor the delivery of paper charts and updates to ships. The tool has a red light system to indicate where the superintendent needs to fill something in, for example provide the name of the agent the company uses at the next port of call, which the paper charts can be posted to. The online system has direct hyperlinks to the page of the DHL website which provides tracking information for the chart delivery, so the superintendent can check the chart has been received and see who signed for it. The tool is intended to minimise the hassle shipping companies face in keeping the shipboard charts up to date as much as they possibly can. It would be ideal if the ship could check this system over the internet itself and monitor its own chart delivery, although Lilley and Gillie acknowledges that this is probably a fair way off. According to Graham Knight, managing director, much of the company's recent growth as been due to ships taking out chart management services due to concern about ships failing inspections because they do not have the right charts onboard. "A managed chart system can help a lot with vetting inspectors," says Mr Knight. "When the inspector comes onboard and sees a Lilley and Gillie system, he knows exactly where to look to check they have the right charts." SUBHEAD Background The company was acquired by new owners, Charente Ltd, in 2001; at the time it was an old established supplier of nautical instruments (clinometers and barometers) and paper charts. In turn Lilley and Gillie acquired marine equipment supplier Walker Marine in June 2002, a manufacturer of compasses, off course alarms, wind speed direction indicators, autopilots, speed logs, echosounders and similar equipment; basically all the ship's navigation equipment which isn't tied down. The company is based in Birmingham, UK. After the acquisition, all of Lilley and Gilley's manufacturing was also moved to Birmingham - the company retains its headquarters and manages commercial activities from North Shields in the North of England. The parent company of Charente Ltd is Hansen Line check, which is an old established shipping line which used to run container ships between the UK and West India, East Africa and the Far East, a service discontinued in 1999. Charente currently has a shipbroking business, another chart business and a part interest in a gas ship, as well as being parent of Lilley and Gillie. After the acquisition, Graham Knight, the company's sales manager, was appointed to managing director; the holding company admired his practical approach, technical background and knowledge about how the company could be improved. Lilley and Gillie can distribute electronic charts, but doesn't believe there is much money to be paid there for the time being. "Very few people that I can see are making money out of electronic charts," he says.