A Weymouth manufacturer is celebrating its highly-successful first year as an independent company.

Magicard Ltd, based on the Granby Industrial Estate, recently celebrated its first anniversary as an independent company since its private-equity backed management buy out (MBO) from Ultra Electronics Group.

With all manufacturing operations still in its UK facility, Magicard’s secure ID card printers are installed in more than 100 countries around the world and are printing more than 150 million secure ID cards every year.

Over the past year since the MBO, backed by private equity group LDC, the investment in the business has been significant and the company is now poised for further growth over the coming years.

CEO of Magicard Ltd, Andy Matko, said: “We are in an exciting period of significant investment in the business. Over the past 12 months we have added new sales managers to target South East Asia, Eastern Europe and to increase our market share in the United States and Western Europe. We have also bolstered our internal sales and marketing teams and have significantly increased capacity by expanding our operations area to meet this upcoming demand.”

Magicard is also investing in new products, with an innovative roadmap ahead, including brand new products and the revamp of its existing product range. Investments in this area have been significant too with the addition of a large number of skilled engineers.

Technical director Andy Cornelius said: “We have an ambitious roadmap to bring a number of new products to market over the coming years. Thanks to LDC’s investment, I have been able to accelerate this by almost doubling the size of our New Product Development engineering team and we plan to start releasing new products by the end of this year.”

The first of these new products includes a cutting-edge electronics platform that will be a first for the ID card printer industry.

Looking to the future, the company has also cultivated relationships with local higher education establishments and their assistance with in-house training to bring new talent into the business.

Debbie Clark, HR manager, said: “It’s these bonds with local education establishments that enables Magicard to give back to the local community. As one of the leading technology companies in the area we are always on the lookout for future generations. We are doing this by expanding our apprenticeship programme in the Weymouth area.”