With a shove and a sassy shake of her finger, 10-year-old Kira Harris pushed aside engineer Ollie to show him how to work a manual spring starter.

Towers School pupil Kira, now 11, is the star of a product video for Ashford-based manufacturer Kineteco.

She is also the niece of managing director Karen Rhodes, an accountant turned engineering boss who is turning a hidden gem into a global player in the maritime safety sector.

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“What is better to show how easy it is to use your product than a schoolgirl showing an engineer how to do it?” asked Ms Rhodes, who has been at the company for three and a half years.

The firm, which employs 10 people, makes devices which can manually start engines when electric starters fail.

The spring starter has been used by fishermen for decades because of its life saving potential for the crews of vessels on the high seas.

The niche product was part of the giant Midlands automotive manufacturer Lucas CAV until it sold off the business in 1996 when bosses decided it was not in line with the rest of its products.

Yet life was not easy for the new owners of the company – three business associates and engineers.

“If you had seen the place when I turned up…” said Ms Rhodes with a gasp.

“It was treated as the shareholders’ hobby rather than a company going places, even though it had potential.

“There were only three people, all in the same office, with no office furniture or decent computers.

“I often say I wish I had taken photos when I started working here. It was like going into your grandad’s workshop.”

Ms Rhodes joined the firm after a career as the finance director for several companies and 10 years consulting on mergers and acquisitions across Europe in the oil and gas sector.

“I wanted a challenge,” she said. “I loved the product. No one really does it. It’s global and yet so small and I thought ‘I can do something with this’.

“Sales were under-marketed. No one knew about the product and when they did they thought it was a great idea.

"The company was run very on much word-of-mouth and run on repeat business.”

Whereas its previous owners serviced orders as and when they arrived, today Kineteco’s structure has been formalised into divisions like purchasing and sales.

“Now it’s very streamlined,” said Ms Rhodes, who lives in Ash, near Canterbury, and grew up in Ashford.

“People are responsible for their departments. An order comes in and it’s out the door the same day. Things are massively changing.”

That change has not been without its challenges. One of Ms Rhodes’ first actions was to cancel a deal with its primary distributor, which slashed annual turnover from £723,000 to £398,000.

“It resulted in less turnover but more profit,” she said. “That was the level of discount we were giving them. It was pointless.

“We took the hit in the last year and we are now seeing a massive improvement in the figures in the current financial year.

“Being a niche product, they can’t buy it from anyone else. So customers can buy from me directly or through our new network of distributors at a reasonable price.

“Now we are seeing an increase in the numbers and our margins are better. That is where my finance background comes into this.”

Kineteco, which is based in three units at Willesborough Industrial Park, managed turnover of £314,000 in the year to the end of July 2016, although pre-tax losses grew 59% to £218,000.

The aim over the next five years is to increase output to be between 5,000 and 8,000 a year to make the company profitable. At present the firm sells about 1,000 starters a year.

Deals are now in place with distributors in Australia, the Far East and the so-called Benelux countries of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

Ms Rhodes said: “It’s more than do-able from this premises and with this level of staffing.”