JUST a week after carrying off the trophy and £2,000 cheque, as the first two-time winner of the Medway Messenger Small Business of the Year award, Talon Manufacturing has moved forward again.

Managing director Michael Dudney has signed the lease on new warehouse premises at Medway Valley, Strood, as the latest move in the company's expansion plans.

He said: "We need more room to increase our production. But rather than moving the machinery, which would have involved stopping production for a while, we decided to take on new warehouse facilities instead.

"Ideally I would have found premises on the Medway Business Park close to our existing factory. But we are close to the motorway and it will only take 20 minutes to transport products to the new warehouse."

Talon built its success on the manufacture of water pipe clips - the little plastic fittings which hold your plumbing to the wall. But Michael, a trained toolmaker, invented a clip that gripped like the claws of an eagle, hence the company name.

He began selling clips from the garage of his home in Strood. So the move to the new warehouse is something of a homecoming.

Later he opened up a small workshop with one machine churning out the clips at the rate of a box-full every two hours. Michael had to both operate the machine and sell the product.

Now Talon Manufacturing produces about 60 million pipe clips a year, mostly sold to the trade via builders' merchants.

Michael said: "I think a major part of our success has been down to service. We guarantee a next day delivery. We aim for quality rather than quantity, but somehow we manage to achieve both."

Michael believes the future development of the company will hinge on new plastic products, related to the plumbing trade. It already makes fixing plugs and pipe covers, in addition to the original pipe clips.

"Winning the competition has been a tremendous boost to our staff," he said. "We had 16 people at the dinner and they all had a great time. It was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the company's success."