OXFORD, England, June 15, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Newton, Europe's leading operational and financial improvement specialist today announced that it has successfully completed a project with Rutland Partners' CeDo Group, one of Europe's leading manufacturers of household disposables, to increase performance without capital expenditure at their site in Katy Wroclawskie, Poland. The project, which was one of several opportunities originally identified in the pre-acquisition operational due diligence, delivered significant increases in aluminium rewind efficiency equating to EUR0.8m annualised profit improvement.

Back in June 2009 Rutland had exclusivity to purchase CeDo and called upon Newton to perform operational due diligence on the company's business plan. Working in partnership, Newton and CeDo identified significant potential savings through opportunities in efficiency, yield, capital expenditure avoidance, value engineering, reduced labour cost, in-sourcing product, energy reduction and increasing capacity. Following Rutland's successful acquisition in September 2009, Newton was appointed to work with CeDo's management team to deliver the opportunities and uncover the value identified in the due diligence exercise, commencing with the project at CeDo's aluminium rewind facility. Rutland has since gone on to win the 'Buy-out of the Year Award' at the M&A Awards in May 2010 for the acquisition.

"Rutland selected Newton on the back of a longstanding relationship and proven track record in operational improvement" said Ben Slatter, Partner at Rutland. "Newton has made significant improvements in several of our previous investments, delivering material savings on each occasion. We are confident that Newton will increase CeDo's profitability considerably and have already seen the benefits in the aluminium rewind business" he added.

CeDo's aluminium rewind business faced three key challenges which were limiting the performance of their operations: inadequate capacity to manufacture everything in-house; material losses; and roll quality. Newton were brought in for an 18 week project to address the challenges and establish new processes to enhance the profitability of the business.

"Newton performed a series of complex split-solving exercises on the shop-floor with our machine operators to identify the causes of the capacity inefficiencies" said Les Jakeman, Group Manufacturing Director at CeDo. "Working together, this enabled us to challenge cycle times, which ultimately allowed us to increase machine speed by 50% on some products, allowing for all manufacturing to be brought in-house," he added.

Newton made further machine modifications and implemented a short interval control system to manage the opportunities around aluminium waste, quality and downtime. "Making various adjustments we have made a 45% increase in aluminium rewind efficiency, reduced aluminium spend by EUR0.4m, adding EUR0.8m of annualised profit to CeDo's Polish business" said Tom Wedgwood, Director at Newton. "To ensure the improvements are sustained we have provided the CeDo team with the skills and information needed to monitor and drive further improvements going forward by implementing Newton's unique Tracker(TM) System," he added.

Newton has recently moved onto a further opportunity identified in the due diligence, this time at CeDo's recycling facility in Holland.

About CeDO

CeDo is one of Europe's leading manufacturers of household disposables, manufacturing both own-label and proprietary products such as refuse sacks, bin liners and other speciality kitchen and household disposable products including nappy sacks, clingfilm and aluminium foil. It holds strong supply relationships with the majority of Europe's largest supermarkets and discounters.

CeDo is backed by private equity firm Rutland Partners and has global turnover of GBP200 million.

For more information visit http://www.cedo.com

About Rutland Partners

Rutland Partners is a highly differentiated UK mid-market private equity firm. Rutland focuses on underperforming businesses where it can actively engage to improve performance, enable restructuring or assist with strategic change.

For more information visit http://www.rutlandpartners.com

About Newton

Newton is the leading operational and financial improvement specialist in Europe. Founded in 2001 by a group of highly qualified and experienced engineers, the company's objective is straightforward: to deliver performance improvement of 10% - 50% in any client's operations and supply chain without incurring capital expenditure.

From its roots in manufacturing, Newton applies its unique engineering based approach across a wide range of industry sectors, working in areas as diverse as aerospace, automotive, defence, food & drink and healthcare, from the factory floor to design offices and throughout the supply chain.

Newton are not management consultants, they do not focus on strategy, re-structuring or re-organisation - their focus is on identifying and resolving the issues that limit performance, to deliver a tangible and measurable improvement, backed by Newton's guarantee "no results, no fee".

Newton has a substantial proven track record and has worked with many forward thinking organisations including Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems, VT Group, Nissan, Kerry Foods, British Airways and the NHS.

For more details on how Newton can benefit your organisation, please call us on: +44(0)1684-576477 or visit http://www.newtoneurope.com.

    
    Media Relations for Newton Europe:
    Laura Skett,
    +44(0)1865-920700,
    Laura.skett@newtoneurope.com .