So Norbain have gone into administration. At least Norbain were in administration but now it seems everything is back to normal with the intervention of Newbury Investments (UK) Ltd. The status quo resumed???
Well this is how the people at the helm would like it to appear of course. What though has really gone on? Why would a company with the might in the world of CCTV that Norbain posses succumb to the point where they can no longer trade at a profit?
There are two lines of thought on this. The first is they left the move into IP CCTV way to late. Barry Shakespeare their forward looking M.D was tasked with taking the company to the next level and IP was his favoured route pretty much to the exclusion of all other CCTV solutions.
The second line of thought is that the failure of the CCTV industry to adopt IP in the quantities that had been predicted is the reason Norbain fell on hard times. IP has failed to capture the imagination of installers and the net result is poor sales and loss of market share from the CCTV industry to IT integrators.
The losers in this whole thing will of course be the creditors if they fail to get paid out in full, victims of a pre-pack agreement? We don’t know, however we feel very sorry for them if this turns out to be true. Also what will happen to installers with warranty on goods? Will these be honored? What about on going projects can orders for these still be met?
Its very early days of course and we will see how things pan out but this could prove that IP was not the way forward and that HD CCTV and HD SDI products will benefit from this. lets wait and see however Norbains line has been reiterated as follows……..
…………”Norbain has issued a release describing the sale to Newbury as an “acquisition”. Barry Shakespeare, managing director of Norbain SD Ltd, stated: “We are confident that Norbain’s best in class operations combined with Newbury Investments’ financial strength and complementary distribution experience will secure our future growth strategy”.
Lets hope this turns out to be the case.