2013 was one of our best years of trading since the company was formed in 1978. It seems that the overall UK economy is looking rosier for 2014, too. According to a BBC story, growth remained strong in January for the UK manufacturing industry; the UK’s construction sector grew last month at its fastest pace for almost six and half years and business confidence is at a record high.
Our US office is also benefitting from the growing US economy and has doubled its staff and orders over the last 12 months. According to the Financial Times, The Commerce Department reported that the economy grew by 3.2 percent in the final quarter of 2013.
This all bodes well for all of our businesses! Rest assured that our bigger team (big announcement in our next newsletter and my next blog!) and bigger factory will mean that we’re set to cope with the growing demand!

Travels
Since my last blog in December, I’ve been busy visiting our US office, our new North African partners EMH France and Royal Wagenborg in Holland with our Dutch partners Van Gool.

straightpoint and van gool go for a drink

Pieter Van Duijn & Mr Loadlink (aka David Ayling)

I have some major travels coming up, but I’ll give you the highlights in a future blog!

New User Manuals Now Available in 12 languages
For those of you whose first language isn’t English, we have good news. We’ve launched new user manuals in 12 different languages, including Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic and more… The manuals are available on-line or in printed hard copy – feel free to contact me if you’d like us to send any manuals to you.

Data Logging Update
For those of you who’ve used our data logging software to link the display of cabled load cells to a single PC, we’ve made a few upgrades to make it even more user-friendly. The key one is that it now includes up to 20 logs per second (previously 3 logs per second), which is ideal for those monitoring dynamic loads.

Keep your eyes peeled
We’re currently in our rigorous testing phase for several new products we’ll be launching later this year, so keep your eyes peeled for details in forthcoming blogs.
However, if you’d like to trial a pre-launch version of our new-version Radio Link Plus for free and would be willing to provide a photo (or video) and details of the project you’re using it on, please do get in contact with me.

Case Studies
Thanks to those of you who sent us details of Straightpoint’s products in use within your environment, after seeing our request in our recent newsletter – a goodie bag is on its way to you all!
I’ll be featuring some of the case stories in future blogs.

And finally…
Straightpoint’s US office have recently assisted critical lifts at the Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant in Waynesboro, Georgia, US. Heading up the project for Georgia Power, CB&I used our Radiolink Plus load cells in conjunction with our software, allowing the user to display and log data of up to 24 of our wireless loadcells into a single Windows PC. The most recent Straightpoint units were supplied directly from one of our US partners, Delta Rigging and Tools.

delta rigging
If you have an application for one of our products you’re able to share with us (text and images or video), I ‘d love to hear from you, too… in return I will send you a goody bag.
Mr Loadlink