An engineering firm started in 2004 by two men armed with mobile phones and savings of £20,000 is on course to notch up sales of £2 million this year.

Innov8es, a company set up by David Piper and Mathew Turner, provides rapid prototyping and low volume plastics production to industry.

The pair maxed out their credit cards and traded in their company cars to raise the funds to go it alone in 2004.

Mr Turner said: "We had worked for another rapid protyper, but we thought it would be better to work for ourselves.

"It was really scary at first, there was a lot of uncertainty, but you keep smiling.

"We had a lot of contacts in the industry and traded from day one. But we had to max out our credit cards and drive around in old bangers at first."

In the last 12 months it has doubled its customer base and created 18 skilled jobs in the process.

Starting from a 2,500ft unit in Hortonwood Industrial Estate, Telford, the company recently quadrupled its capacity by moving into an 11,500ft unit nearby.

Innov8es carries out product research, development and design, rapid prototyping, soft tooling, injection moulding, low pressure foaming, CNC machining and complete project management.

Among the parts it is producing include plastic components for the on-board champagne coolers in Rolls-Royces. Other customers include Ford, Nissan, BMW and Land Rover.

Mr Turner said the firm was also looking at opening a sales office in Germany next year.

"There are a lot of automotive design companies in Germany, there is the Ford design centre in Cologne for example, so that is really the place to be.

"This will be a sales office at first, but we could look to have some manufacturing over there as well in the future."

A key element of Innov8es' work is providing a fast turnaround of prototype components that must be as close to production parts as possible to help manufacturers bring new products to market as quickly as possible.

Mr Piper said: "Many companies have a stock solution which they try to make fit.

"We turn this approach completely on its head, listen to what the customer actually wants and needs and then supply the right solution in a one-stop operation from design right through to manufacture in-house."

Last year the pair invested £250,000 in their first CNC machining centres in order to exploit new markets, contacted Business Link West Mercia and enlisted advice and support from the High Performance Engineering project funded by Advantage West Midlands and the European Regional Development Fund.

This led to the acquisition of the latest CAD software package and the relevant training in order to run it.

This gave Innov8es the ability to design, prototype and manufacture many innovative parts in very quick time scales for the automotive industry in both the UK and overseas.

Mick Powell, HPE project adviser at Business Link West Mercia, said: "As a result of that one investment Innov8es has created three jobs and opened up a whole new area of business, leading to the purchase of three additional machining centres. Being part of the High Performance Engineering project has also enabled the directors to

network with other leading-edge, high value-added HPE clients across the region."