A CABLE company has set its sights on hitting the heights for the second time. Fastlink Data Cables in Cheney Manor was established in Swindon in 1992, and quickly made a name for itself as a high-quality designer and manufacturer.

It was taken over in October 2000 by Zycko of Cirencester, a networks and data cable products supplier, in what appeared to be a match made in heaven.

But problems arose when Far East firms started producing cables for a fraction of the cost it could be done in Britain.

Zycko started to look elsewhere, and in 2002 managing director Allan Oakes and operations director Claire Jell bought the firm back.

Mr Oakes said: "In all owner-managed businesses there comes a point where you have to force the issue.

"We sold the company to Zycko in the best interests of the employees at the time so we could grow Fastlink, because if you don't grow, you're finished.

"You need to continuously get more customers and continuously expand."

Mr Oakes said he and the staff were devastated when instead of Fastlink being able to use the bigger company's expertise in IT, sales and marketing, it found itself surplus to requirements.

"It was shattering," he said.

"Some of the things we thought were going to work out didn't materialise and against a background of emerging markets in the Far East, without the management buyout it would probably have gone.

"You never really know, but it's most likely Fastlink would have gone."

Zycko's CEO Rory Sweet said: "We are market-driven. When it became clear that we could source our data cable requirements to the highest standards from Asia, it made good business sense to put Fastlink back on the market.

"With Allan and Claire at the helm, it couldn't be in better hands and I wish them and all the workforce every success."

Sadly, some staff had to be released, as after the MBO Fastlink started looking for new markets, and had to start from scratch.

Mr Oakes said: "It's fairly unusual for a company to do that but we succeeded quite well with defence contracts with the Navy, the Air Force and the MoD and we make a large variety of products we didn't make before."

Now Fastlink is up to 29 staff, and has supplied cables for BT broadband exchanges, for chip and pin systems, and is hoping to carry on its work with the military as the armed forces move towards hi-tech intelligence-led work, such as high-spec cables for listening devices.

Mr Oakes said the company is now looking to take on more staff, after 18 months of stabilising.

"We had to be careful and frugal with the pennies.

"We had to make judgements as to which markets we could keep and had to set our sights on certain markets and be proactive."

If there was one area Mr Oakes says could be better is the Government's treatment of manufacturers.

"The Government doesn't do anything to help manufacturers. Money is pumped in but not used very well. We take people off the dole and train them so they can earn their living, but there is nothing offered for that only useless grants and paperwork." he said.