Report - Concentric Controls, Birmingham - 22/03/09

Adders · Jun 20, 2009

Bit of a late one this for some reason. It seems unless I take to going through the photos as soon as I get back from somewhere, then I leave it for ages. Visited with inlovewithsound, God, and Helen.

Located in Aston right next to the expressway, Concentric Controls specialised in valves and control systems for gas and other uses. It had been part of Concentric plc, a global group of companies headquartered in Birmingham, who as a whole specialised in the design, manufacture and supply of pumps and cooling fans to diesel engine and equipment manufacturers

This place is trashed, just a heavily vandalised and graffiti-ed shell.There's very little left to identify what it actually was, apart from the big sign which clearly says "Concentric" on the side. Internet research has drawn a lot of short leads, and I can't tell you much apart from the following extracts I've found off google, and that the land is currently owned by Buywise Holdings Ltd.

Feb 6, 2004 - MORE than 100 jobs are on the line at a Birmingham firm which was one of the founding businesses of the city's Concentric engineering empire, it was revealed today. The 130-strong workforce at loss-making Concentric Controls in Aston Hall Road, Aston, were stunned to be told yesterday the firm was in receivership.

Mar 26, 2004 - A BUYER has stepped in to snap up the profitable parts of a stricken Birmingham manufacturer which went under last month putting 130 jobs at risk. An unidentified buyer clinched a deal with receivers running Concentric Controls in Aston Hall Road, Aston...

The take over doesn't seem to have materialised, and the land was left to rot whilst the following scandal unfolded...

Dunlop Haywards valuer Ian McGarry has been caught up in a tangled web of strange valuations, mystery purchasers and nonsensical leases, at the centre of which is an uninspiring two-storey industrial building on the outskirts of Birmingham. During the high court trial on 18 January, it emerged that the building, the former Concentric Controls factory on Priory Road, Aston, was sold no fewer than four times over a two-year period, its price increasing to 10 times its original sale value.

Only now is it clear that the four purchasers who bought the building in such quick succession - Avocet Holdings, Valley Estates, Ascot Marketing and Goldgrade Properties - were all linked to each other and to Ahmed Afsal, a Birmingham property trader. And that false valuations by McGarry were being used to borrow far more money than the property was really worth. (http://www.accessmylibrary.com)