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The greatest challenge yet

Having created and worked to build a successful company for over twenty years, Managing Director Frank Grunfeld is squaring up to his biggest challenge yet-his personal battle with Parkinson's disease.


Confronted with a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, most people would be forgiven for throwing in the towel, or at least descending into deep depression. Not so Frank Grunfeld, founder and Managing Director of Nima Technology.

Frank explains, "In a strange way, since my condition has been diagnosed, it's concentrated my mind and had a positive effect on the way I manage the business." Nima Technology specialises in the design and manufacture of equipment that enables molecules to be 'stacked' in layers. Disarmingly described by the Nima team as 'molecular Lego kits.' The equipment is used in Universities and research facilities around the globe making the company very successful with a robust balance sheet and an ever-burgeoning order book.

Throughout the company's growth, Frank freely admits that he has been a very 'hands on' manager-never really being able to find the time to train and delegate, especially in the critical and complex area of product software development. All that has changed. "I have realised that my condition has been an incentive and spur to sort things out and make the company self sustaining. I've now made the time available that I never thought I had."

Progress at Nima moves on apace. Always extremely supportive, the University of Warwick Science Park has leased the company much larger, better-planned accommodation. New technicians are being recruited and personnel training programmes are in place. All issues Frank suggests other owner managers should address, preferably before they have to react to any unforeseeable force majeure.

Stoic, even sanguine, regarding the future, Frank says it's a truism that there are always many people in worse predicaments than the one he's confronting. He adds, "After all, it gives me a great sense of achievement that some of our equipment is used in medical research establishments around the world." And then another inspirational thought; "Who knows, one of them may yet come up with a cure!"

16/08/2004