Moving up in the world

After 15 years Britannia head office has decided to expand its horizons beyond the traffic jams of Croydon and has set itself up in a shiny new purpose-built office and warehouse in Merstham, Redhill. The staff at BMI have seen a great deal in that time at Croydon. Three MD’s have come and gone, there’s been a global recession, the Croydon riots, an Olympic torch paraded through the streets and the Britannia building has been evacuated at least twice, due to warehouse fires on the Imperial Way business park. But, the time was definitely right with the lease coming to an end to look towards new horizons.

Someone once said ‘where there’s muck there’s brass’, so when BMI stumbled upon a bit of brown-belt land for sale in Redhill in September 2015 it seemed like a good solution to the lack of existing commercial property for sale in the Surrey area. A little over a year later, we have an all singing all dancing set of offices and a warehouse that is all Britannia’s. The BMI teams have been installed since Monday 21st November, with the warehouse contents having been transferred over a three week period in early November.

All went extremely well with the office move, carried out over the weekend of the 19th November. BMI has Britannia Sandersteads to thank for this, ably project managed by Steve Almandras, as well as the hard work and co-operation of the BMI staff themselves who dismantled long existing desk paraphernalia such as files, stationery and photos of loved ones pinned to the dividing boards! Recognising that an army (and Britannia staff) marches on its stomach, McDonalds Happy Meals fuelled everyone’s efforts on the final Friday before departure and all was kept to schedule.

While Croydon on Friday 18th November looked like a bomb had hit it, all was a picture of calm serenity at the unoccupied offices in Merstham and as you can see from the photos, in spite of the stampede since then, things have remained relatively tidy and organised. There was even an opportunity on Day 1 for pizza in board room and a Britannia cake, all washed down with something fizzy.

So far, BMI have had several visitors to the new offices – clients, commercial partners and suppliers and all have been impressed with the new set up. We look forward to welcoming more visitors in the coming months, now that we are fully settled into our new site.