A Leading entrepreneur who left school with no qualifications and went on to develop a global multi million pound company in his spare time will pass on the secrets of his success to an influential audience of Wrexham business bosses next month.

Alan McCall, managing director of Nu Instruments, based on the town's industrial estate, will be one if the keynote speakers at the latest meeting of Wrexham Business Professionals at the Ramada Plaza on Thursday February 4.

He will join two Welsh Government Ministers, Carl Sargeant and Jane Hutt, in addressing the group which includes highly skilled firms of solicitors and accountants working together to raise the profile of expertise that exists in the region and beyond.

Mr McCall will tell members about his early beginnings as a 15-year-old Merchant Navy mechanic and his subsequent career which saw him found Nu Instruments as a sideline while still working as a firefighter.

The company, which last year celebrated its 20th anniversary, currently manufactures a range of highly sophisticated measuring instruments which are snapped up by universities, laboratories and commercial organisations across the world, including the NASA space agency.

The state of the art mass spectrometers made by Nu Instruments are aiding cancer research and one of its machines was used in the United States to determine the origins of a murder victim.

Mr McCall, 58, left school without any qualifications and joined the Merchant Navy at 15 to become a ships engine room mechanic.

After a few years at sea he moved to a shore job as an instrument technician with a defence contractor working on guidance systems for British forces and acquiring qualifications as he went.

He also became a part-time firefighter and loved the life so much that he eventually became a full-timer, based first in the south of England and later in Wrexham.

He recalled: "Although I knew firefighting was the job for me, the money was pretty bad so I started up my own business in my spare time, running things from my loft at home.

"I was a sub-contractor doing designs for electro-mechanical assembly and quickly became very successful.

"As a result of the business I was approached by two leading scientists, Dr Philip Freedman and Professor Keith O 'Nions, who wanted me to help them develop a new generation of inorganic mass spectrometers.

"Together in 1995 we set up Nu Instruments in just a single room at the premises we are still in at Clywedog Road South on Wrexham Industrial Estate and things have grown rapidly from there.

"At first we had just one employee and now we have about 130, including many highly qualified scientists, working at our Wrexham base and at the operations we have set up in China and Japan.

"We sell and install our spectrometers on every continent of the world apart from Antarctica and they cost between £80,000 and £1.8 million.

"We make 10 different types of spectrometer and we are the only country in the world producing two of them.

"Throughout my early days as a sub-contractor and then while Nu Instruments was growing I remained in the fire service, at one point being seconded to the office of the then-Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, as an auditor working on fire and rescue services in the south if England.

"I only retired from the fire service five years ago and concentrated on transforming Nu Instruments. Its turnover has since grown from £4.7million to £18 million."

Mr McCall added: "There is high demand for our spectrometers from leading universities across the world, including Oxford, Cambridge and latterly Cardiff in the UK to Harvard in the States, which use them on a range of research projects.

"Our machines are being used in the field of cancer research where they are looking at trace metals within the cancer, which could help with its clinical diagnosis.

"We also sell them to many national laboratories and commercial groups internationally, including the mining industry in Japan which uses them for metal analysis to help produce the purest copper in the world.

"The North American Space Agency, NASA, has one of our instruments to analyse materials from things such as meteorite which falls to Earth from outer space.

"One of our machines sold to the University of Florida was used to analyse material taken from the body of a murder victim and revealed details of a change in the person's diet indicating they had at some stage originally lived in Greece before moving to the US.

"I think that helped with the investigation although it didn't actually solve the case."

Mr McCall described himself as a "late starter" when it came to business but added: "The prosperity of my business has grown out of Wrexham, so a few years ago I decided I would like to give something back to the area.

"That's why I joined Wrexham Business Professionals, which has the same aims.

"Like the group, I back the simplification of the planning process for businesses.

"At the moment I think there is too much red tape and regulation. We need a more joined-up relationship between the Welsh Government and local councils.

"I'm also very in favour of lower Corporation Tax, perhaps based on means testing and a company's ability to pay.

"I recently put my idea to the Welsh Government for an ethical companies scheme, under which firms would display a special badge if they could prove they were doing the right things in terms of paying a living wage, providing good pensions, profit sharing and also training based on ability and not qualifications."

The Wrexham Business Professionals breakfast meeting at the Ramada Plaza on Thursday February 4 has the theme Powering Regional Prosperity - the Climate for Business.

Joining Mr McCall as keynote speakers will be Jane Hutt AM, Minister for Finance and Government Business, and Carl Sargeant AM.