Meet Sirus Automotive, our #madeinsandwell Monday star company for this week.

Based at Britannia Park in Wednesbury, the company (www.sirusautomotive.co.uk) is the UK’s leading provider of upfront wheelchair-accessible vehicles. Sirus’ range includes independent wheelchair-driver and wheelchair passenger-upfront vehicles, each designed to give freedom and independence to people who have disabilities.

The company also offers an adaptations service, so if a customer has a standard car and needs assistance with driving controls, getting in and out, or stowing a wheelchair, Sirus Automotive has products to make life easier. Mobility specialists work with each customer to find the right solutions – offering no-obligations home or workplace demonstrations to be as helpful as possible.

Sirus Automotive was established in 2004 so this is the company’s 15th anniversary year. It’s a good time to reflect on what the company has achieved, what the team is most proud of, and what the future will hold.

Sirus’ achievements are plentiful. Just a year after being established, it had full accreditation with the specialist car leasing service Motability.

In 2009 Sirus was awarded the highest of honours for a UK business: a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the category of Innovation. Representatives from Sirus received the honour from Her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace. In recognition of the company’s work with people with disabilities, Sirus Automotive employees have also been guests at the Houses of Parliament and 10 Downing Street.

“But of all these achievements,” said Sirus Automotive’s production manager Simon Alleman, “we are most proud of being able to give people their independence”.

The company’s excellent reputation is based, according to Simon, on all the great people in its team. The company employees 87 people, including apprentices. “Sirus has a very loyal workforce who are dedicated to the company,” he said. “We’re like a big family, really”.

Sandwell is special to Sirus too. “We work with customers from Scotland down to Cornwall, so it’s very good for our business to be based in the heart of the country,” said Simon.

In 2008, the company moved within Wednesbury to bigger premises: a 25,000 sq ft building, where all conversion processes, quality control, and vehicle adaptations are carried out by Sirus’ highly trained engineers.

The Britannia Park site is praised by customers for being fully accessible, with flat entry, accessible toilets and disability friendly parking. “They even have an amazing reception team to greet you and assist with any needs on arrival”, one customer on the Sirus website is quoted as saying.

As for the future, Sirus Automotive is showing no signs of standing still. As we reported earlier this year, the company launched a new product in 2018 which led to contracts in Europe and New Zealand, the expansion of its Wednesbury office space, and a new data system to manage the increasing of customer records.

And we congratulate Sirus Automotive, most recently, for being a finalist in the Business Innovation category at the 2019 Sandwell Business Awards.

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