Paralloy safeguards route to Olympic cycling glory
King’s Award winning Teesside business Paralloy has helped safeguard a route to Olympic cycling glory by renewing its sponsorship of the North East’s only elite women’s racing team.
Team Boompods is managed by Nikki Metcalfe who, when not working as an Administrator for Paralloy in Billingham, spends most of her time organising the team’s 12 riders who take part in 16 National races each year plus many other regionally-based events.
The team was launched in 2016 and has gone from strength to strength but last year lost one of its main backers when Paralloy bought Nikki’s previous employer’s company.
However within weeks of the takeover Paralloy agreed to sponsor Team Boompods and a year on it has confirmed that its support for the grassroots amateur team will continue.
HR Manager Ian Grimes said: “It’s all about hard work, dedication and commitment for Nikki and her team and that’s a perfect reflection of the expectation we have of our employees.”
Nikki did not start cycling competitively until she was 42 and, despite maintaining her speed and stamina, decided to step aside for younger riders.
Their races, half of them more than 100km in distance, take place all over the country and Nikki and husband Phil are there for almost every turn of the wheel.
“It’s hard work and tiring, but well worth it,” said the Team Boompods manager “ If you’re not giving it 100% it’s not worth doing. We wouldn’t survive without the support of Paralloy and our other sponsors and that would leave a huge gap in the North East where more and more women are taking up cycling.”
That interest could be set to grow after British women cyclists won more medals than the men at the 2024 Paris Olympics, with the inspirational 21-year-old Emma Finucane becoming the first GB female athlete in 60 years to win three medals at one Olympics.
Her team-mate Anna Henderson, who won GB’s first Silver Medal, began her cycling career at the same level as the Team Boompods and competed against many of its riders.
“It’s a bit like the football pyramid where people start at the grassroots and if they’re good and sufficiently motivated move to the next level and so on,” said Nikki. “There’s no reason why a woman cycling with us could not progress and one day compete in the Olympics and wouldn’t that be great?”
Earlier this year Paralloy received its equivalent of a Gold Medal when it was awarded the UK’s highest business honour, a King’s Award for Enterprise.
Paralloy has been in business since 1967 when it opened a foundry in Billingham. But it has been transformed since a management buyout in 2020.
Revenue has increased three-fold, the workforce has more than doubled to more than 550 and the company has spent millions of pounds on new equipment, infrastructure and Research and Development. It has acquired four additional sites at the Tees Advanced Manufacturing Plant (TeesAMP) in Middlesbrough as well as new locations in Billingham and Sheffield.
And in June it completed the purchase of the French company Manoir and its UK subsidiary Hi-Tech Fabrication, taking on a further 500 employees.