A restructuring at Worksop memorial wholesalers R Lidster has seen Anthony Lidster, sales & marketing manager for the past 11 years, move to more southerly competitors George Willcox (Granite) Ltd to spearhead their expansion in the North. Willcox have always sold in the North but their stronghold has been the South up as far as Leicester in the Midlands. Anthony will help them extend that heartland up as far as Newcastle, which could even act as a stepping stone into Scotland. He says: "Willcox have built a sound reputation for quality and service in the South and wish to expand their operation to cover the whole of England and Wales."

To begin with, at least, customers in the North will be supplied by Willcox from their Evesham, Worcestershire, base using the existing delivery fleet.

Anthony\'s move came as a result of his position at R Lidster, sold to John Richardson and his father-in-law Robert Blatchford in 1999, being made redundant. Other job losses at the company have come through natural wastage, says John Richardson, the MD. John says: "It\'s been an interesting 18 months - certainly not boring." He says the writing was on the wall at the 2004 Natural Stone Show, at which R Lidster exhibited. So did a number of Chinese companies. Lidster continued to manufacture memorials in the UK when most of their competitors had accepted the inevitable price advantage of importing. Their big advantage was that they could deliver in 6-8 weeks whereas imported stones took 12-14 weeks. The disadvanatge was that their memorials cost £500 rather than the £350 of imports.

Their advantage disappeared in 2004 when the Chinese started delivering in 10 weeks. "In 2003 we converted 700tonnes of slab into memorials. In 2005 it was 100tonnes," says John. Lidster have had to go the import route, although they still produce English sandstone and limestone memorials in their factory and will add inscriptions and decoration there as required.

Lidster have lost 10 jobs from the factory but have won the contract to supply in-service death memorials to the Ministry of Defence and have invested in a CNC Incimar lettercutting and engraving machine. They have also diversified into the production of kitchen worktops. John says that whereas the factory was previously working 100% on memorials (80% production and 20% lettering) it is now 50% memorials, 30% lettering and 20% worktops. And he would not be surprised to see worktops taking 30% of the factory capacity before long. However, he has every intention of exhibiting at the National Association of Memorial Masons\' Centenary Tradex exhibition that is part of the National Funeral Exhibition being held at Stoneleigh Park in Coventry 15-17 June next year.