The firm imports $50m worth of PCBs into Europe through its sourcing business, said the firm’s chief executive Craig Wright but also shipped $4m worth of other components. This figure is expected to rise to $10m next year, he said.

Wright said Exception could make a margin of about five per cent on shipping PCBs and another 10 per cent or so on other services, such as managing customer’s order books.

The firm also contract manufactures at its facility in Wiltshire, and makes PCBs at its site at Tewkesbury. Wright said an increasing amount of work is coming to European tier two contract manufacturers – even from tier one OEMs – as the bigger contract manufacturers have shifted production to lower cost areas.

“Tier one contract manufacturers have had to go back to customers and say ‘actually we can’t do what we said we could’. Two firms have done that to their customers in the past 12 months,” said Wright.

Defence and aerospace work is driving growth at Exception, said Wright, and the firm is looking to expand in Scandadnavia with two sales staff in six months and in Germany in 12 months..