BQ North East Issue 18

www.bq-magazine.co.uk

ISSUE EIGHTEEN: SUMMER 2012

EMPIRE STRIKES BACK The triumphant return of a giant from the past HEATED DEBATE Could green energy really power our economy?

WASHDAY WISHES Putting a positive spin on manufacturing failures VOICE OF EXPERIENCE Why the region’s small businesses are in safe hands

SPECIAL ONE

Former finance man reveals the Quantum theory behind one of the North East’s fastest growing pharmaceutical firms BUSINESS NEWS: COMMERCE: FASHION: INTERVIEWS: MOTORS: EVENTS

NORTH EAST EDITION

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WELCOME

BUSINESS QUARTER: SUMMER 12: ISSUE 18 Immerse yourself in these pages if you’ve been glancing nervously at the bottom line recently.

This BQ has sustainables specialist tadea and friends suggesting how to save up to 5% on those energy bills especially vexing to manufacturers striving valiantly to get Britain’s economy moving again. The hint comes with no initial outlay. And if you rely heavily on oil, gas or electricity you should read about Pamela Petts’ ambitions for Ebac, a County Durham firm in the news recently for other reasons.

We’ve also insights from Geoff Hodgson, now chairing North East Access to Finance – a regional funding guardhouse – on how best to set about chasing investment and backing. He knows the problems, being an entrepreneur, still, himself. There’s an interview too with Andrew Scaife, planning a fourth deal in three years only months after the North East company he leads, Quantum Pharmaceutical, was named the nation’s 14th speediest grower in a fast track chart.

In a constructive way, join us over lunch with Brian Manning. Find out also why the name Brims is back with a bang.

And if you really want to slash company outgoings read Tom Bailey’s proof that doing the rounds by cycle and public transport rather than company car is a winner on the clock as well as a saver on expenses. Maybe, though, you’d prefer, like Stuart Anderson, just to steal away for a while on a round the world yacht race. Enjoy your read.

Finally, some exciting news about further development of BQ, the business publication that our readers say is refreshingly different.

If you haven’t read or heard yet, the County Durham based BE Group has acquired Room

501 Publishing Ltd, the independent publisher of BQ and provider of a range of business to business products across the North of England and Scotland.

The BE Group, which has already supported many businesses directly in areas BQ serves, has thus added a publishing arm to its growing portfolio of business to business activities, and it’s a significant step in growth plans also for BQ and the other activities of Room 501 Publishing. With the support BE Group can give, Room 501 Publishing aims to increase the footprint of its leading business titles, business events portfolio and contract publishing work. Opportunities all round, in short.

Alastair MacColl, chief executive of the BE Group, says he’s delighted to welcome such a talented team into the BE Group. And the team is delighted at the opportunity now to bring longer-term ambitions for BQ nearer, sooner.

Brian Nicholls, Editor

CONTACTS ROOM501 LTD Christopher March Managing Director e: chris@room501.co.uk Bryan Hoare Director e: bryan@room501.co.uk George Cheung e: george@room501.co.uk Euan Underwood e: euan@room501.co.uk EDITORIAL Brian Nicholls Editor e: b.g.nicholls@btinternet.com Andrew Mernin e: andrewm@room501.co.uk DESIGN & PRODUCTION room501 e: studio@room501.co.uk PHOTOGRAPHY KG Photography e: info@kgphotography.co.uk Chris Auld e: chris@chrisauldphotography.com ADVERTISING If you wish to advertise with us please contact our sales team on 0191 537 5720, or email sales@room501.co.uk

room501 Publishing Ltd, 16 Pickersgill Court, Quay West Business Park, Sunderland SR5 2AQ www.room501.co.uk

THE LIFE AND SOUL OF BUSINESS

room501 was formed from a partnership of directors who, combined, have many years of experience in contract publishing, print, marketing, sales and advertising and distribution. We are a passionate, dedicated company that strives to help you to meet your overall business needs and requirements.

All contents copyright © 2011 room501 Ltd. All rights reserved.

While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, no responsibility can be accepted for inaccuracies, howsoever caused. No liability can be accepted for illustrations, photographs, artwork or advertising materials while in transmission or with the publisher or their agents. All information is correct at time of going to print, July 2012.

NORTH EAST EDITION

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BQ Magazine is published quarterly by room501 Ltd.

BUSINESS QUARTER |SUMMER 12

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CONTE BUSINESS QUARTER: SUMMER 12 BriMSFUL OF COnFiDEnCE

46 LIFE BEGINS AT 40

Features

Private man opens up on unsung hero of North East business

51 PITCHING IN BQ sets a flock of magpies loose among the region’s business leaders

30 SOMETHING SPECIAL The Quantum theory behind one of the region’s fastest growing pharma firms

36 EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Charting the return of an old name with a bright new future

40 LIVE DEBATE Could green energy and renewables fuel the regional economy?

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

76 WASHDAY WISHES Putting a positive spin on Britain’s manufacturing failures

80 VOICE OF EXPERIENCE Geoff Hodgson on his vital role of guiding small businesses to success

86 SETTING SAIL Meet the MD who’s getting ready for a round-the-world yacht race

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36 SOMETHing TO SHOUT aBOUT

46

TENTS NORTH EAST EDITION

ENTREPRENEURS’ FORUM MAGAZINE

Inspirational news and features for North East entrepreneurs

52 COMMERCIAL PROPERTY Landmark deals and developments shaping the region’s skyline

Regulars

56 BUSINESS LUNCH Esh Group’s Brian Manning on basketball and business building

62 MOTORS Heading for a place on quality street

08 ON THE RECORD Who’s making headlines this quarter?

66 WINE

BEYOnD THE BUiLDErS YarD

56 WaSHDaY WiSHES

Gossipy and great

12 NEWS Who’s doing what, when, where and why, here in the North East?

28 AS I SEE IT A busy estate agent tries to survive the working week minus his motor

68 EQUIPMENT Restricting the robots

72 FASHION Whiter than white makes a designer outstanding

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76 BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

ON THE RECORD

SUMMER 12

Good call on phone charges, travel firms steer clear of slump, top ten spot for events group, the impending doom of an iconic industry, Magpies kick on into the black, and time to mind your manners >> Call charges to Europe fall Keener pricing of phone calls to and from Europe took effect from July 1 and further reductions will apply by 2014.

New rules by the European Council allow people to sign up for a second, alternative provider for their roaming services elsewhere in the EU if their domestic provider’s charges seem too high. New retail price ceilings have been put on charges too. Initially, outgoing calls are reduced to €0.29 a minute, incoming calls fall to €0.08, text messages are capped at €0.09 and data roaming is limited to €0.70 a megabyte.

The later cuts will take another €0.10 off per minute outgoing calls, €0.03 off incoming calls, €0.03 off texts and €0.50 off the per megabyte data charges. Mike Odysseas, managing director of Stocktonbased Odyssey Systems, says: “It is great news for travellers that these price changes have come in time for summer holidays – and even better news for commerce.”

Keith Proudfoot: Skills concern

>> Whistle while you work Employees at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the North East remain positive, optimistic about the future and happy in their jobs, according to a study.

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

News of a fall in GDP and continuing crisis in the eurozone has not dismayed workforces in the region, invoice finance specialists Bibby Financial Services believe. Their study shows 25% of SME owners and managers in the North East seeing greater motivation among staff in the first quarter of this year – a 14% rise from the final quarter of 2011.

But there was a sharp fall in the number of business owners still hopeful about the future - from 56% in the final quarter of 2011 to 40%. And since then, May has marked the fastest contraction in the region’s private sector output in nearly three years. New orders and backlogs of work also fell faster. This contributed to the first drop in staff numbers for 27 months.

The brighter news was that input cost inflation eased a tad, and output charges decreased marginally, according to the Lloyds TSB North East Business Activity Index. But it was a third successive month of decline in the region’s private sector output. Craig McNaughton, area director for Lloyds TSB Commercial in the North East, says that, though only modest, the rate of decline was the sharpest in 35 months.

Reduced activity appears to reflect fewer new orders, and the output drop was broadly based across services and manufacturing. Nick Parsons, a yorkshire Bank economist, believes that in strong manufacturing areas the performances of 1994-6 can be repeated when the average rise was 9% a year. The fact remains, however, that between February and April unemployment in the North East grew by 11.3% to 145,000, whereas nationally it fell by 0.2%. The North East toll may continue, the poor summer having reduced seasonal vacancies and a flood of university and school leavers expected to find limited job opportunities. Businesses generally in the

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North East continue to see growth despite the present adversity, a North East Chamber of Commerce economic quarterly study concludes, suggesting the largest increase in business positivity since 2008. The region suffered the UK’s biggest increase in business insolvencies during May – a 61% leap to 58 - but it was still one of the smallest, says data company Experian. yorkshire was the only region where insolvencies fell.

Over all, business confidence in the North touched its highest level since the end of 2009 in June, according to the latest ICAEW/Grant Thornton business confidence monitor. But Keith Proudfoot, ICAEW’s director in the North East, says: “The outlook remains fragile generally and I remain concerned at low levels of capital investment, which could store problems for future years.

The region must find ways to address the real – or perceived – skills gap. I hope the recent launch of the Growth Accelerator programme will help.”

>> Agents defy holiday slump Major travel agencies in the North East are standing up well against the drop in holiday spends. Newcastle based Dawson and Sanderson expects its £100m turnover to be up by at least 3% this year, and is growing its 300 strong workforce. The travel firm, started at Ashington in 1962, now has 21 branches across the North East and yorkshire.

The upbeat trend follows a £500m sales increase in a year by Hays Travel, the UK’s biggest independent travel agency, based at Sunderland.

SUMMER 12

COMPANY PROFILE

The £125m Finance for Business North East Fund is continuing to support business growth in the region and recently made its 400th investment.

£125M FUND MAKES 400TH INVESTMENT

B

EYOND Digital Solutions, a growing digital signage business based in Sunderland was the 400th investment made by the portfolio when it received £250,000 from Northstar Ventures’ Accelerator Fund this summer.

With SMEs still struggling to secure finance from traditional funding sources, the Finance for Business Fund is providing a valuable lifeline for many growing SMEs like BDS, ensuring they have the necessary funding to match their ambitions.

Launched in 2010, the Finance for Business programme runs until the end of 2014 and has made 425 investments to date. As it approaches the half way mark in the programme the fund has comfortably achieved the targets set for this stage. In excess of £51m of the portfolio has been invested so far across sectors such as waste, healthcare, bio-technology, manufacturing, engineering and green businesses.

Comprising seven separate funds – run by six different fund managers – the portfolio caters for early stage businesses. The aim is to provide a continuum of finance for SMEs at different stages of growth to support economic development and job creation in the North East.

Andrew Mitchell, chief executive of North East Finance (NEF), which manages the Finance for Business programme, explains: “The fund has made a huge impact and been a real advantage for the North East and the business community here.

“It is helping to drive deals and meet the equity gap that SMEs have traditionally faced – and which has become even more important since 2008 and the financial crisis.”

Over 500 new jobs have now been created and a further 1200 safeguarded by the programme’s early investments. This success is underlined by the additional £60m of private sector investment that has been secured to support deals made by the Finance for Business North East funds.

Andrew adds: “After 2008, there was naturally a drop in deal volume in the region but our portfolio has helped to drive the number of deals and ensure

L-R Ian Richards (Northstar), Louise Richley and Stephen Lovely (both BDS)

FUNDS AT A GLANCE 425 investments £51m invested £60m private sector secured 500 new jobs created 1200 jobs safeguarded there’s a significant amount of venture capital in the market.

“Attracting funding from private investors and angels was always a key component of the plan and we want to build on this to create a strong network of investor support for businesses here in the North East.”

Beyond Digital Solutions is a prime example. It received £250,000 from the North East Accelerator Fund as well as existing angel investor Middleton Enterprises in its latest funding round.

The digital signage company, which has already created five new jobs this year, supplies signs to clients such as Butlins, Volvo, Esquires Coffee House and the NHS. The new funding will enable the company to capitalise on growth in the digital signage market which covers messages on devices such as mobile phones, iPads, TV monitors and outdoor digital billboards.

Louise Richley, managing director of BDS, said: “It is a testament to the ongoing success of Beyond Digital that we have secured this funding.

It is allowing us to invest in facilities and create

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new opportunities in the region.”

It is just one of many successful interventions.

Hydraulics system manufacturer, Quick Hydraulics, received a six figure investment from the Growth Plus Fund last year following a management buy-in. The investment is helping the new management team put its ambitious growth plans into place which include new product development and diversification into new markets. Extra jobs have already been created and there are further plans for recruitment in 2012.

Andrew Mitchell adds: “Financial support for a programme like this won’t be available again so we have to take full advantage of it now to create sustainable businesses like BDS and Quick Hydraulics which will create jobs and future investment.

“Any returns we make from these investments will be ploughed back into the pot for reinvestment in future businesses to build a long-term legacy for the region. We’re working on creating these legacy funds now with our partners.

“We’ve still got a lot of work to do here as well as working to ensure the pipeline of deals continues through to 2014 and that businesses understand what investors are looking for but we’re very optimistic.”

The Finance for Business North East Fund is managed by North East Finance and is backed by money from the European Regional Development Fund and European Investment Fund.

North East Finance, St James’ Gate, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4AD 0191 211 2300 enquiries@northeastfinance.org www.northeastfinance.org

BUSINESS QUARTER |SUMMER 12

ON THE RECORD

SUMMER 12

>> Born 1847, dies any time now

Adrian Evans: Progress reflected

>> Into the talkers’ Top 10 NewcastleGateshead has shot into the UK Top 10 and European Top 100 destinations for staging international conferences and other events.

A poll, compiled by the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA), has seen the NG combination enter the UK Top 10 for the first time, above Liverpool, Leeds and york. It also leapt 66 places to 93rd in Europe.

Adrian Evans, senior business tourism manager at NG’s Convention Bureau says: “The rankings reflect how far NewcastleGateshead has come in the last few years.”

It now ranks 10th in the UK, five places up since the previous poll in 2010. A proposal for an international conference and exhibition centre is being developed for Gateshead Quays, supported by the bureau, Gateshead Council and The Sage.

Currently meetings and events taking place in NewcastleGateshead contribute around £277m to the local economy annually.

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

The North East’s world famous tank building tradition now breathes its last from a kiss of death planted by all three leading political parties.

BAE Systems, Britain’s biggest manufacturer, is closing the Vickers works at Scotswood in Newcastle following defence cuts and a switch to overseas arms buying, decisions made by the previous Labour government and sustained by the Tory and Lib-Dem coalition.

The fall-off in orders now from the Defence Ministry for various arms and equipment has caused BAE Systems to cut almost 430 jobs in the North East – 330 in the doomed Scotswood factory where tanks had been turned out for conflicts round the world since the First World War. It is also cutting 100 jobs at its munitions factory relocated only recently from Birtley to Washington, hitting the North East worse than other parts of the country. With other job cuts at Crewe, Glascoed in South Wales and a handful at Farnborough, and manufacture of armoured vehicles being centralised at Telford in Shropshire, BAE will cut 600 jobs in all.

This is in addition to thousands of jobs cut earlier.

Expressing sympathy for the workers whose jobs will go, James Ramsbotham, chief executive of the North East Chamber of Commerce, added: “The North East has produced some of the finest armoured vehicles of any manufacturer across the world. It is incredibly disappointing this proud history looks like ending next year.”

BAE in a 15 year partnering agreement with the MOD in 2008 has introduced a transformation programme aimed at saving £200m in five years. The Scotswood business whose manufacture of tanks and other land vehicles, arms, warships, cranes and bridges goes back to 1847, is currently building Terrier armoured engineering vehicles for the Army but there is no prospect of further orders for these. Soon only a small team may be retained in the North East to provide specialist support to armoured vehicle customers.

Paul Woolston, chairman of the North East LEP, hopes a consultation promised will result in many fewer job losses than are proposed.

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>> Magpies top for profit Newcastle United is English football’s most profitable club - with profits topping £32m after its first season back in the Premiership – according to Deloitte’s latest annual review of football finance.

The football club showed the seventh highest Premier League revenue in 2010/11, at £88.4m.

With only the 13th biggest annual wage bill, £53.5m, it was also able to run on a margin unmatched by any Premier League rival. It now stands 25th among football clubs worldwide in revenue terms.

Sunderland’s revenue for the 2010/11 was just over £70.3m.

But Manchester United topped the Premier League for revenue at more than £300m.

>> Divide and rule PwC has announced the split of its Northern practice into two regions – the North East and the North West.

Ian Green is now regional leader for the North East, Steve Denison having been promoted to lead the firm’s assurance business across the UK regions. Green has been with PwC 25 years, eight of them as a partner. He has latterly led the Northern restructuring practice.

He is looking forward to building on the success of the firm’s 1,000-strong team in Newcastle, Leeds, Sheffield and Hull.

Paul Woolston, senior partner in Newcastle, says the change will help intensify focus on the North East. In the North West, Iwan Griffiths, who was an audit partner seconded to PwC’s Tokyo office with expertise in financial services, has joined the Manchester office as regional leader and office senior partner.

>> Mind your manners Bad-mannered staff in reception and front of house generally are the main deterrents to almost half of professionals doing business with other firms, research for services office operator Business Environment suggests, following a poll of 1,000 businesses across the UK.

Install a charge post and join the North East electric vehicle revolution

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Electric vehicles are a major part of the transport of the future and are set to revolutionise our lives. With tens of thousands of sales predicted over the next few years, these green vehicles are not only good for the environment but they’re incredibly cost effective to run too. Of course, putting the infrastructure in place to ensure that drivers are never too far away from a charging post is essential – that’s why the North East is leading the way. These posts are popping up everywhere and businesses are seeing the benefits of providing charging access for themselves, their employees, customers or clients. And with funding available towards every standard post fitted in North East England there’s never been a better time to lead the charge.

Up to 1,000 electric vehicle charging points are being installed in North East England. Find out how you can play your part at www.leadthecharge.org.uk or email chargeyourcar@gateshead.ac.uk Project funded by the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV), One North East and North East regional parties.

NEWS

SUMMER 12

Triple jumping into forum boardroom, long haul train journey keeps rolling, market milestone for energy group, Wrigglesworth departs from port, and hungry caterpillar gets bigger

Top trio: (left to right) Graham Robb, Brian Jobling and Alastair Waite

>> Three more for board Three new board members have been announced at the Entrepreneurs’ Forum: Brian Jobling, Graham Robb and Alastair Waite.

Chairman Nigel Mills says: “They are great ambassadors for the North East. Their businesses are outstanding examples of innovation and talent in this region.”

A new honorary member of the organisation is Justin Urquhart Stewart, co-founder of Seven Investment Management. He joins serial entrepreneur Graham Wylie, co-founder of Sage, founder of Technology Services Group (TSG) and developer of Close House luxury hotel, golf course and fitness centre.

Brian Jobling is chief executive of the Gateshead video games developer Eutechnyx. Since launching his business as Zeppelin Games Limited in Gateshead in 1987, he has built it into a highly respected and successful international business, operating in a competitive global market.

Graham Robb is senior partner and founder of Darlington-based Recognition Marketing and Public Relations.

The former radio presenter was northern press officer to former Prime Minister John Major, William Hague and Michael Howard and, in 2005, assisted in David Cameron’s leadership campaign. Alastair Waite is a director of Onyx Group, the Stockton specialist in business continuity and IT and business systems disaster recovery.

The board now has 14 members.

For more news from the Entrepreneurs’ Forum see the organisation’s special publication at the centre of this issue.

>> Hitachi’s on track Hitachi has reaffirmed its train building operation for the North East will be for the long term.

Its head of European operations, Keith Jordan, says the Japanese giant is in final-stage talks with an unnamed European organisation for a lucrative deal ensuring train assembly can continue in the North East long after needs of the UK’s railways have been met.

Hitachi should know the outcome within six

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

months. Besides this, and the contract with the UK Government to build trains for a £4.5bn Intercity Express Programme (IEP) at a factory in Newton Aycliffe, further opportunities are envisaged on the Continent.

The company will also bid to replenish London Underground’s train stock.

The £77m Aycliffe operation’s research and development centre will enable it to compete globally, Jordan said. And equipment besides trains could be made. Geoff Hunton, director

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of developer Merchant Place, said local contractors will get every consideration and awards around the Newton Aycliffe site will be down to cost and quality.

Darren Cumner, 42 and from Bristol, will oversee the factory fit-out then run the operation day to day from 2015. He was previously with Parker Hannifin, whose products are used by the like of JCB and Caterpillar. He has also worked abroad extensively abroad for brake system manufacturer Knorr Bremse and set up a factory in China.

Nearly 400 contractors – half from Teesside and County Durham – attended the latest briefing at Xcel Centre in Newton Aycliffe.

The operation’s research and development centre will enable it to compete globally >> Back to market Energy and utilities consultancy Utilitywise, based at South Shields, is the first North East company in five years to have listed on the stock market.

Under founder Geoff Thompson, Utilitywise started with three employees in 2006 and now has 230 and a place on the AIM. The last North East firm to list was Tyneside drugs developer eTherapeutics in 2007. The number of firms from the region on the market has shrunk in recent years.

SUMMER 12

>> Boost for railways Rail services on the East Coast Main Line are to be upgraded, cutting journey times, as part of a £9bn government investment claimed to be Britain’s biggest rail spend since Victorian times. Reservations have been expressed that fares will rise to meet some of the costs.

Network Rail is presently considering bids from contractors keen to oversee electrification and upgrade work worth up to £800m. The electrification will be on both the East Coast Main Line and the Transpennine Route. Work would start in June 2013 for a March 2020 completion.

On Teesside, a new station is among £4.5m of rail improvements in an allocation from the Local Sustainable Transport Fund. The new station at the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough is expected by 2014.

And 11 existing stations will be improved.

NEWS

David Simpson (left) with Duncan Lowery, senior investment manager of IP

>> Spinout comes north >> Shoes shine A shoemaker serving top world athletes has secured a £12m investment to go for a 50% increase in global sales this year. Eight years ago Zimbabwe born Wayne Edy opened Inoveight in a disused Methodist church in Wolsingham to sell his lightweight running shoes. The shoes are now sold in 58 countries.

London based Isis Equity has taken a stake for an estimated £12m.

Glythera, an emerging biopharmaceutical firm working in biological therapeutics and vaccines, has moved from Bath to Newcastle and secured a £2m round of funds with IP Group. The company, a Bath University spinout, has set up commercial operations at Newcastle’s INEX incubator, following an initial £600,000 investment split equally between IP Group and its managed fund, the Finance for Business North East Technology Fund.

Two more tranches over another two years will be similarly sized and require certain milestones being met.

Chief operating officer Dr David Simpson says: “Relocating to the North East makes a lot of sense for us, due to the region’s strong pedigree in biomanufacturing.”

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BUSINESS QUARTER |SUMMER 12

NEWS

SUMMER 12

>> Leaving port Sir Ian Wrigglesworth has stepped down as chairman of the Port of Tyne after seven years to devote more time as treasurer of the Liberal Democrat Party. Sir Les Elton, former chief executive of Gateshead Council, has succeeded him.

“Many companies in our sector employ only a few people and administration of payroll and insurance, for example, can make a heavy demand on running costs. We have considerable expertise and resources in the activities we can share.”

Owen Pugh, which employs 300 people, covers the North East and Cumbria from Dudley in Northumberland, Stockton, Blaydon and Marsden.

Dickson, recently appointed the chairman also of the Civil Engineering Contractors’ Association in the North East, says the region’s civils and construction – the worst hit anywhere in the country - shows signs of recovery. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has concluded likewise from a survey of workload levels by members in the region.

>> Food jobs triply hit in County Durham

John Dickson: Expertise and resources to share

>> Backroom help for civils firms Recession-defying Owen Pugh Group is offering to help cut overheads of smaller firms struggling in the construction and civil engineering slump.

It is offering to share its training, laboratory and business services to help cut the other firms’ overheads.

Chairman John Dickson explains: “With our latest turnover at £25.6m and, hopefully, £28m next, we are growing outward as well as upward, and can offer some of our key services for smaller firms wishing to reduce their spending.

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

County Durham’s food sector has suffered four quick setbacks costing more than 1,000 jobs.

Irish owned Kerry Foods was likely to close by end July, taking out 350 jobs.

A six month fightback failed to restore profit to the sliced meat, bakery and snack products firm.

Two other bakeries have been affected. More than 400 jobs are at risk with an entry to administration of the 46-year-old family business Peters Cathedral Bakers.

The company with a £12m sales has a bakery and 58 outlets across the North.

It recovered 97% of turnover after a bakery fire forced a temporary switch of production to Peterlee while a new £9m bakery was built in 2005. KPMG administrators, looking for a buyer, closed branches at Stockton, Billingham and Pity Me, making 17 staff redundant, while continuing to run the bakery of 100 products.

At the Derwentside bakery of Tindale & Stanton, more than 100 jobs were jeopardised with its re-entry to administration after only a few months. However, 85 jobs were saved by a management buyout.

The crisis had arisen over difficulties in

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securing a brief cash lifeline.

It now seems certain Seaham has lost 281 jobs with the takeover and closure of Cumbrian Seafoods by young’s Seafoods.

The Seaham factory, like those at Amble and in Cumbria, is closing. Production is moving elsewhere, with a loss of up to 420 jobs in all. young’s, based at Grimsby, bought Cumbrian Seafoods and its subsidiary Border Laird out of administration. Cumbrian Seafoods, headed by Peter Vassallo – a former national entrepreneur of the year - was started in Cumbria in 1997.

It moved largely to Seaham in 2007.

The Amble business specialised in langoustines and fishcakes.

The crisis had arisen over difficulties in securing a brief cash lifeline >> BT’s new director Farooq Hakim, 43, is now regional director for BT in the North East, which employs more than 3,800 people.

He is a Sunderland University graduate and was previously an executive in large scale business transformations.

>> Rock solid again The future of 55 jobs at Rock Farm Dairy is secured following a sale of the County Durham firm’s business and assets to UK Dairy Sales Ltd (UKDS).

>> Out of Africa The Blyth based safety equipment firm Draeger now has an American managing director, Michael Norris from Ohio. He was previously managing director of Cummins business in Africa.

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NEWS

SUMMER 12

>> Big projects bid for cash

On the up: Newly promoted partners at Ward Hadaway (from left) Helen O’Neill, Jane Garvin, Teresa Davidson, Jonathan Dickson and Martin Woodford

>> Lawyers’ profits grow Law firms in the North East and Cumbria continue to show over-all growth.

Research by the Law Society and Lloyds TSB Commercial suggests firms’ practice fee income rose 1% last year in a sustained recovery from recession. Average net profit per equity partner grew from £112,549 to £114,853 – a 2% gain.

Law Society president John Wotton says: “With more competition and more opportunities for practices through changes under the Legal Services Act, robust management is now critical for law firms out to attract external investment or to remain competitive.”

Dickinson Dees has shown profit 10% up to £12.1m, turnover up 2.4% to £46.1m in a year that included a new office for Leeds, new recruits and more places for newly qualified solicitors.

Managing partner Jonathan Blair affirms times had been difficult for professional services.

The full service law firm also operates from London and Newcastle, the latter its birthplace where it has committed to another 10 years on the Quayside.

Fellow Quayside resident Ward Hadaway, which has raised five of its lawyers to partners, has topped £30m in turnover for the first time in a fourth consecutive year of growth. The rise was 6% with profit 9% up to a record £9m. It now has 78 partners. It employs more than 400 people in Newcastle, Manchester and Leeds, and has doubled the size of its Leeds offices.

Also in Newcastle, Muckle LLP has taken revenues up 15% to £10.46m in a year of 112 corporate deals, six more than a year earlier.

DWF, which recently merged with North East law firm Crutes to move into Newcastle and Stockton, has seen a 19th year of consecutive growth – with a 21% increase in net profit and a 24% growth in revenues. Turnover was £102m.

It employs more than 1,500 people in Coventry, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Preston, and the two North East operations.

Watson Burton’s annual revenues and profits fell. The 200-year-old firm’s income was £12.6m against £14.1m before, with profits from £1.8m against £1.2m earlier. Staffing was reduced from 166 to 140.

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

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Both the North East region’s Local Economic Partnerships (LEPs) have filed proposals for fund support from the Government on behalf of firms currently seeking growth.

The North East LEP (NELEP) has chosen the first seven major development projects for loan bids under the Government’s Growing Places Funds. Flexible loans from the £25m pot are on offer.

As the loans are repaid, starting perhaps from early next year, NELEP will use the reimbursements to assist more regional projects. Tees Valley Unlimited (TVU) meanwhile has endorsed a number of Regional Growth Fund (RGF) bids.

In all, 15 applications have been presented (capital expenditure, £602m-plus), and here more than 1,800 jobs might be created or safeguarded. Applicants include Peel Holdings, on behalf of Durham Tees Valley Airport, which wants to develop the 250 acre south side of the airport for freight services aimed at reducing airport losses.

More than 1,800 jobs might be created or safeguarded >> Port’s progress Annual profits have more than doubled at Port of Tyne, thanks to more than doubled cargo volume handled in 2011.

Turnover was up by nearly a third to £60m, more than doubling profit to £9m.

>> US backs the North East US confidence in the North East is enabling construction giant Caterpillar through its US parent to enlarge its Stockton plant, creating more jobs and up to 2,500sq m of extra manufacturing space.

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NEWS

SUMMER 12

Patriot at 25: David Nicholson shows the colours

>> Red, white and three

Export drive: Ian Farrar

>> Datawright cracks China Wearside software specialist Datawright has taken up the global challenge and broken into China.

The company has secured a £150,000 order there to supply its Kingfisher ERP system to a global supplier of spare parts for marine diesel engines. Ian Farrar, the firm’s commercial director, says: “China has been in our sights since we began our export push in 2010. The kudos now is that we are replacing a system from one of the largest software companies in China.”

China has been in our sights since we began our export push in 2010 BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

Nicholson’s Transport marked its 25th birthday by decking out one if its vehicles in patriotic red, white and blue. The Union Jacked vehicle now has pride of place in the firm’s 15-strong fleet covering UK roads.

Managing director David Nicholson explains: “Three big events this summer – the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the Olympics, and our own 25th celebration. How better to celebrate than have Union Jack livery? Our colours have always been red, white and blue.”

>> QUOTE OF THE QUARTER

We’re almost like our own worst enemies in the construction industry at the moment.

We have a situation where, if a firm isn’t busy, it’ll quote a crazy price just to try to keep its guys busy. It ends up dog eat dog, very cut-throat. There are also instances where clients come back and keep chipping away and chipping away at an agreed price. I think we owe it to each other to try to get us out of the mess. We work on a fixed price and try to put a fair price in Richard Wood, sales and business development director, Brims Construction, Sunderland.

See Page 36

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NEWS

SUMMER 12

>> Dedicated helpers Hitachi Capital Invoice Finance, the cash flow management provider to UK SMEs, has initiated a £50m credit facility to give North East business a lift. And Lloyds TSB Commercial has a new dedicated manufacturing team to support businesses across the North East and Cumbria.

Headed up by area director Craig McNaughton, the team includes five manufacturing relationship managers whose sector experience has been accredited by the Warwick Manufacturing Group, following their training with Warwick University.

Mover: Anna Matthews

>> Excellent, but...

One of the North East’s five centres of excellence is folding and another merging following the demise of the regional development agency which devised and largely financed them.

Codeworks, which got most of its £2m funding from ONE, is closing after a decade.

Besides its support and networking roles it put the region on the sector’s global map with industry events such as Thinking Digital. Six staff have lost their jobs. The networking operation Connect now comes under Gateshead Council, merged with the council’s digital creative network, The Hub. Meanwhile CELS, the centre of excellence for life sciences, is merging with Bionow, peer group of the North West. While the centres in Manchester and Newcastle will both remain, with no loss of jobs in Newcastle, the combined operation will be called Bionow.

Besides its support and networking roles, it put the region on the sector’s global map BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

>> Headliners • Mike Ashley the sports store magnate and owner of Newcastle United FC is still the North East’s richest individual – worth £1.75bn, The Sunday Times Rich List reckons. He ranks 36th in the country.

• In birthday honours CBEs have gone to: Paul Callaghan the final One North East chairman, entrepreneur Jeremy Middleton for political and charitable services. An OBE has gone to John Mowbray, director of corporate affairs at Northumbrian Water.

MBEs have gone to: Andrew Hatton, founder and technical director of Global Anodes (UK) Ltd of Durham, Bruce Hewison for services to tourism in Northumberland, Peter Judge, ex-director of legal services and procurement at One North East, and Brian Milner for services to the Royal Mail and disabled people.

• Sir Jonathan Ive, the 45-year-old senior vice president of industrial design at Apple – and graduate of Newcastle Polytechnic (now Northumbria University) - has received his knighthood for services to design and enterprise.

• At 28 Anna Matthews (above) has been promoted to assistant director at the North East’s largest investment management firm, Brewin Dolphin.

Originally from Corbridge, she joined the company five years ago, a Newcastle University graduate. She has returned to her home region after two and a half years with the firm in London. She was previously an investment manager.

• Service Network’s Culture for Success awards saw Barclays’ contact centre in Sunderland the overall winner with category successes for Calvert Trust at Kielder, Dipsticks Research at Hexham, and Spark Response at Sunderland.

• Greggs the baker has been named North East Company of the Year.

• Chartered accountants Tait Walker, in their 75th year in business, have won the 2012 Accounting and Finance Employer of the Year Award. The firm employs more than 130 staff at three offices in Newcastle, Stockton and Morpeth.

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NEWS

SUMMER 12

Boom time: (left to right) Paul Rowe, managing director of Wessington Cryogenics, Gill Southern, director, and Councillor Paul Watson, leader of Sunderland City Council

>> Back in the airport chair Peel Holdings director Robert Hough is back as chairman of Durham Tees Valley Airport. He was previously chairman for six years from 2003.

At Newcastle Airport, the Danish group Copenhagen Airports is disposing of its 49% stake, and interests in other foreign airports.

Simon Bailes (front) of Simon Bailes Peugeot with Antony Henderson, md of Henderson Campbell (back), at the new Guisborough dealership

>> LNG makes Wessington go boom New global wins are propelling Wessington Cryogenics into bigger premises and raising the workforce by 30.

The 28 year old Sunderland firm, which designs and manufactures specialist gas storage tanks, moved into Rainton Bridge Business Park only two years ago. It has now outgrown the 70,000sq ft there, thanks to major contract wins with oil and gas customers, and is adding a Castletown unit to its operation.

The business with a £9m turnover and 120-strong workforce has its new unit at Sunrise Enterprise Park.

Managing director Paul Rowe says Sunderland City Council’s support over a number of years has been “outstanding”.

>> Cheese pleases Prima Cheese, which supplies the fast food and catering industry from its Seaham headquarters, has taken top honour in the North East Exporters Awards.

In its first year of selling overseas it is already into markets as far afield as Dubai, Lebanon and Pakistan.

It also won New Exporter category in the awards, which were sponsored by UK Trade & Investment, the North East Chamber of Commerce and HSBC. RESULTS: New Exporter: Prima Cheese (Seaham).

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

Runners-up: Breastvest (Newcastle) and Global Manufacturing Supplies (Prudhoe).

Expanded Horizons: Jordan Valley Semiconductors (Durham).

Runners-up: NTE Ltd (Peterlee) and Datawright Computer Services (Washington).

Export Team: Pinnacle Re-Tec (Consett).

Runners-up: John Liliey and Gillie (North Shields) and Hardy and Greys (Alnwick).

Overall Achievement: Prima Cheese.

Runners up: Jordan Valley Semiconductors and Pinnacle Re-Tec. Outstanding Contribution to North East Exports: Komatsu UK Ltd (Birtley).

22

>> £1m lift for dealerships Simon Bailes Peugeot, the Teesside and North yorkshire car retailer employing 120 staff, has completed a £1m investment project with a refurbishment of its Guisborough premises. Its Northallerton and Stockton branches were refurbished earlier. Local builder Henderson Campbell did the upgrade.

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NEWS

SUMMER 12

>> Honour for architect Architect Alan Smith has been made an honorary freeman of Gateshead.

He has worked on the borough’s regeneration since before the Garden Festival in 1990. In 10 years following, more than £1bn was invested in a mile of riverfront there. Also he chaired for six years the board bringing about The Baltic. Now 10 years old it is, among art galleries, second only to the Tate in the UK for visitor numbers.

Alan Smith has also been responsible for The Hilton, Sunderland College, Northern Design Centre (the only one of its kind in the UK) and the Baltic Quarter master-plan in Gateshead. Antony Gormley, creator of the Angel of the North and Sune Nordgren, founding director of the Baltic, has been similarly honoured.

>> They cleared the hurdles More than £150m worth of known Olympic contracts have come to the North East – at the very least.

The figure and number of wins may be much higher. But because order-winning firms are gagged by contract clauses forbidding any publicising of successes – due to Olympic sponsor agreements – deal details are only leaking out.

Newcastle architects FaulknerBrowns were early out of the blocks designing Lee Valley White Water Centre in Hertfordshire. It was the first 2012 venue completed – in 2010.

And Cundall, which operates from Newcastle,

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

engineered at the £31m course that will host slalom events.

Security doors at the main Olympic stadium were made in the region. And every drop of water at this stadium has come from what one organiser calls “a bloody big tap in Morpeth”.

Cleveland Cable Company has made £8m supplying nearly 940,000m of cable towards equipping the stadiums, the village, and temporary shops, offices and toilets. Cabling was also needed for sound and lighting, computers, battery and phone charging, cameras, generators, and the Olympic clock and timers. In all this required from Cleveland

24

some 70,000 separate cables, for which 50 extra staff were taken on.

The Middlesbrough firm, owned by Alastair and Michael Powell (fifth equal in the North East’s Rich List compiled by The Sunday Times), is the UK’s largest cable supplier.

Only one other firm in the same sector also tendered successfully.

Alnmaritec at Blyth renewed the small boat fleet The Port of London requires to serve security.

North East coach companies provided vehicles, some entire fleets, for official use in London.

These include J Thirlwell and Sons of Swalwell, Henry Cooper Coaches of Annitsford, and Green Mountain Travel of Newcastle, which more often ferries film crews.

Olympic football at Newcastle were expected to boost the North East economy directly, and the region also provided two training camps – at Sunderland for Grenada and at Durham for Sri Lanka. Hotels also benefited.

Many more North East contracts would have to be disclosed to indicate the region had got a sizable chunk of Games business.

Lloyds Banking Group, a major sponsor, says the British economy will be boosted by £16.5bn between now and 2017.

More than half the benefits are in construction contracts.

Other Olympics beneficiaries include: Canford (Washington), Apex Wiring Solutions (Durham City), Hathaway Roofing (Bishop Auckland), International Paint (Gateshead), Dane Architectural (Hamsterley), Harrison External Display Systems (Darlington), Varley & Gulliver (Middlesbrough), Cleveland Bridge (Darlington), Sotech (Peterlee), Henry Williams Ltd (Darlington), 4 Projects (Sunderland) and Emma Hitnett (Staindrop).

More than £150m worth of known Olympic contracts have come to the North East

SUMMER 12

>> Leading independent publishers acquired by the BE Group (Business & Enterprise Group) Independent publishers Room501 Publishing Ltd has been acquired by the County Durham based BE Group. Room501 publishes a range of business to business products across the North of England and Scotland.

The deal concluded recently sees the BE Group add a publishing arm to its growing portfolio of business to business activities, which also include business improvement services, supply chain development and event management.

The BE Group has acquired the shareholding for an undisclosed sum and will work with the existing team to build the business on a national basis. On-line and in print.

Alastair MacColl, chief executive of the BE Group said: “We are delighted to announce the acquisition of Room501 Publishing Ltd and to welcome such a talented team into the

BE Group. By bringing room501 into our Group we are continuing to invest in the development of a formidable portfolio of business services which offer all of our customers more choice and value.

“Quite simply, together we will be able to provide a comprehensive publishing, communications and events package for both established and new customers.”

Chris March, managing director of room501 said: “This is an important development in our growth plans for the future and our continuing expansion of the business across the UK. Room501 has grown significantly over the last few years and, with the support of the BE Group, we aim to increase the footprint of our leading business titles while continuing to grow our business events portfolio and contract publishing work. We are very excited

NEWS

about the future and the opportunities that this deal will create for all concerned.

As a result of the move both Chris March and Bryan Hoare, sales & marketing director, will remain as directors and shareholders in Room501 Publishing Ltd. Lawyers Nick James, Hay & Kilner Solicitors and Katherine Hay-Heddle, Ward Hadaway law firm advised on the deal.

This is an important development in our growth plans for the future and our continuing expansion

Read the latest news and views from the North East business community every day by visiting our new website: www.bq-magazine.co.uk/north-east

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COMPANY PROFILE

SUMMER 12

SUPPORTING BUSINESS GROWTH IN THE NORTH EAST

W

HILE much of the media coverage on banking has been negative in recent years, HSBC’s regional team in the North East are working hard to establish strong relationships with businesses in the region and customers’ feedback highlights the success the bank is having.

Consider two thriving North East firms, Fine Organics and Stiller Warehousing and Distribution. Fine Organics has been producing chemicals for the agrochemicals, specialities and pharmaceutical sectors for more than 30 years.

The company started at Peterlee in 1977. In 1984 Laporte acquired control but was itself taken over

by Degussa in 2001. A management buyout, led

by Keith Hanson the present managing director, restored the company from multi-national to private ownership in 2008.

Keith’s background in engineering included 29 years at Laporte and Degussa, latterly as general manager of the Seal Sands, Teesside site. In total the directors of the company have more than 100 years of experience. Likely turnover of about £32.5m this year would represent a £3.5m increase on the previous year, and over the next four years the goal is to reach £53m. Its workforce totals 221.

HSBC’s relationship with Fine Organics started with a cold call about two years ago when the firm wanted to revive an incinerator shut down since 2004. Only two hazardous waste incinerators exist in the country – at Ellesmere Port and Southampton. Tankering 20 tons of effluent from Teesside to Cheshire costs up to £500, plus costs of post-treatment disposal. A Hampshire run costs up to £1,400.

Other Teesside firms face similar costs. Now, with a new licence from the local authority, Fine Organics will be able to dispose of neighbouring firms’ waste as well as its own.

Keith says: “The £1m we’ve been spending before to get rid of waste will stay within our business now. Other local companies wishing to avail will

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

Left to right: Grahame Maddison, Keith Hanson, Stuart Henry also, hopefully, save. Not only are journey costs slashed, but as we’re a smaller business with lower overheads our rates could be much more competitive.”

Stuart Henry, HSBC relationship manager, says the project had already gone to several banks for consideration, including the firm’s existing bankers. “We expressed an interest. Through building a relationship over the following year, and being able to put proposals to the company, eventually the management team agreed to move all their banking needs to HSBC last June.”

Keith observes: “Sometimes when you talk to banks the immediate answer is “no”, and you’ve got to work it up from there up to “maybe”. HSBC’s team said “Yes, let’s find a way”. I’m not convinced every other bank is on the same page.”

During its various ownerships the firm had been with another bank for 25 years, remaining and not borrowing, after the MBO. However, after a strategy review 18 months on and the launch of five new businesses, the firm had decided that the best time to talk to banks was when you’ve cash

deposited and don’t need to borrow. Fine Organics ran a “beauty parade” of about seven banks to decide the best provider for its future needs.

Keith recalls: “We wanted innovativeness and thinking outside the box. Our incinerator was the test. HSBC came back with the innovativeness and thoughts on how to fund us, how to support us through our growth programme. Our business is capital intensive too; we deal with blue-chip customers who want us to invest our money, while they repay over time. HSBC’s ethos and support seemed good. So we moved all our banking there.

Worst offer we got was from our existing bank.”

Fine Organics self-financed its five start-ups.

Now, having just won three big contracts in three months - again with multi-nationals - it needed capital support for up to 18 months. With HSBC backing, it will now start the capital investment programme and expects its customers to have paid back by mid-2013.

The £3.5m for the incinerator, plus capital support need over 18 months, will total about £4.7m. A lot will come from cashflow; HSBC will meet the

hsbc ’s team said: “yes, let ’s find a way ”. i ’m not convinced every other bank is on the same page

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SUMMER 12

balance. Stuart says: “We’re impressed already by the firm’s management, so for us it’s been all about understanding the business and risks within. Several other opportunities with enormous potential are going on.”

The new incinerator should be running by next January. With many Teesside firms suddenly able to consider having their waste disposed of at Seal Sands, fewer journeys to Cheshire and Hampshire will reduce the dangers long-distance bulk removal represents.

Over at Newton Aycliffe, meanwhile, Stiller Warehousing and Distribution is also expansive, and has found HSBC a perfect banking partner as it buys the site it stands on. The £9m turnover business, led by managing director Paul Stiller, is developing a dedicated mini business park within Aycliffe Business Park.

In future besides its own offices, warehousing, vehicles and other logistical facilities, it will have 14 units let to customers looking for the “just in time” opportunity to run their businesses alongside warehouse space and their related needs.

Andrew Winney, Stiller’s finance controller, says: “Having bought our site earlier this year, we wanted some mortgage funds. Having decided to rebank with one of the Big Four, we looked to see who’d do the job best. A major reason to go with HSBC was its full range of financial services. Some other banks might have had certain areas they were good in, but nothing as comprehensive.

“HSBC, we found, is driven globally. With a UK or European bank you get UK or European standards.

HSBC acts as a global bank – embracing standards of China, America, Russia and all the other countries besides. It understands only the best will do. American customers, for example, are much more demanding than British customers.

HSBC brings those global standards to the domestic market.

“After every meeting, for example, there was always a follow-up of e-mailed minutes. That’s the sort of attention to service we give out too. Every HSBC staff member visiting had been with HSBC all along. They’d worked for no other bank. I found staff of other banks had good CVs but had moved from bank to bank. We like stability. I wanted us to be with people likely to be in post 20 or 40 years from now.

“I also felt that, being so well spread around the world, they’d be well placed to deal with situations

COMPANY PROFILE

Left to right: Andrew Winney, Miles Thornhill, Matthew Stiller, Grahame Maddison, Paul Stiller where some currencies might be having difficulties while others wouldn’t.”

Miles Thornhill, HSBC relationship manager, says: “We’d had contact with Stillers over a few years but hadn’t done business with them until the end of last year when the company, as well as the chance to buy its existing site, reviewed its entire banking package.

“They wanted a banker to attend their quarterly management meetings as part of the team, being responsive and re-active. We were able to build a rapport quite quickly and get our appropriate people in front of them in respect of all the areas they’re interested in.

“Also they were keen to look at wider funding solutions such as Invoice financing and Asset financing, as well as their management of their wider risks. We were able to help with that, also with the leverage to buy the site through a commercial mortgage - their first transaction with HSBC.” Stiller’s 108-strong workforce, 42 vehicles and 105 trailers meet customer needs in distribution management, abnormal loads, palleting, construction and general logistics, the warehousing and a special service into busiest parts of London. “We’ve been in business more than 50 years and I don’t suppose there’s much we haven’t moved,” says Andrew.

Grahame Maddison, Area Commercial Director of HSBC’s Tees Valley and the Dales Commercial Centre, says: “HSBC aim to build long term relationships with our customers and provide the banking services they need to grow and succeed.

We are committed to supporting strong, viable businesses of all sizes and across all sectors, and

27

this is highlighted by the bank’s commitment to lend at least £12 billion to UK small and medium-sized businesses in 2012, more than we lent in 2011.

“Many businesses across the region are experiencing growth by trading in new markets and due to our global network and team of specialist international commercial managers, HSBC is very well placed to support this. In response to the growing international needs of our customers, earlier this year HSBC launched a £4 billion International SME Fund to provide specific support for businesses that trade or aspire to trade internationally.

“The North East commercial banking team and I are always keen to meet with businesses and I would encourage businesses to contact us and discuss their current business plans and their future banking needs.”

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Grahame Maddison Area Commercial Director heads up the team at Tees Valley and The Dales supported by Senior International Commercial Manager Stuart Henry and Senior Commercial Manager Miles Thornhill.

Grahame Maddison: 07717484075 Stuart Henry: 07717484161 Miles Thornhill: 07767005789

BUSINESS QUARTER |SUMMER 12

AS I SEE IT

SUMMER 12

Cycle to survive Can you do business without a car? Estate agency folk may need one more than many. But Tom Bailey, a senior surveyor with GVA in Newcastle, spent a week seeing if he could survive using bicycle, bus and Metro train. His diary here suggests the alternative is not only feasible but enjoyable. And think of the overheads to be saved!

MONDAY A trip to Cramlington to meet colleagues from our Manchester office... We’re at the Badekabiner site on Bassington Industrial Estate on a 180,000sq ft insolvency instruction. While they look at disposal of the plant, I'm preparing particulars to sell the land and buildings. My journey here has been a mix of Metro, train and Brompton bicycle so I’m welcomed to the site with a call of “nice bike, Tom” in a Mancunian accent. It is indeed, and on the way I’ve taken a look at another big factory site nearby which JLL has on the market and apparently is going for residential

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

consent. From Cramlington I hop on the bike and cut a couple of miles south to Brunswick Industrial Estate, where I'm advising Litton Properties on their Brunswick Park site. From Brunswick I cycle down to Gosforth Park Racecourse then pick up a bus and Metro back to the office in Newcastle city centre.

As you might guess, I've managed to borrow a folding bike from the Brompton Bicycle Company, and have also been given a free travel card and bus smart card by the transit authority Nexus and bus company Go North East. The idea is to test to what extent it’s possible to do my job car free. Our market for industrial property in the North East has always been as much about manufacturing as distribution. Nearly all big requirements just now are from regional manufacturers needing to relocate an existing skilled workforce.

Public transport is one of the first questions raised. Too often I don’t have the answers, but the plan is to correct that.

TUESDAY I'm heading straight to Cramlington from my home in Tynemouth. Public transport to Cramlington from there means buses, which are alarming to me. My teenage years were spent jumping on and off Routemasters in South London but I've never associated buses with getting to a meeting on time! Here, the Brompton comes in. With a bit of research earlier I’d found the point where bus routes converge on their way to Cramlington. I hop on the Metro from Tynemouth then switch to the bike to take me out to Earsdon village. If I'm going to stand around waiting for a bus I might as well do this where there’s a nice view.

Several buses are due which will get me to Cramlington on time. I take a number 19, sit back and relax. Route 19 has featured on the brochures for schemes I’ve been agent on for five years past, but this is the first time I’ve ridden it. It’s just a bus, but quite an important one if you’re trying to let property on the A19 corridor. I use my Go North East smartcard, called The Key. I am unable to look at this

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without whistling the 1993 hit I’ve Got the Key by Urban Cookie Collective, revealing my age to my fellow passengers. At Cramlington I get back on the bike. A five-minute ride on one of the town’s cycleways cuts me through to Bassington Estate - bang on time, 9am.

Viewing finishes five minutes before the train to Newcastle – no good if you’re walking, but plenty of time on the bike. The train gets me back to the office in 17 minutes - quicker than driving and somewhat making up for the bus ride. Calls are coming in at the office from an electronic mailshot I've had sent out for Hawick Trading Estate. This is a small industrial estate in Newcastle owned by Commercial Estates Group, where although we've had quite a good run of lettings recently we still have some voids to fill. It’s nice to see some real results from marketing spend for a change, three viewings booked for tomorrow.

Admin work for the rest of the afternoon, ordering boards, drafting particulars, start work on a marketing schedule for a meeting tomorrow. On the Brompton down to BNP’s offices on the Quayside at Newcastle to collect Hawick keys and then home.

WEDNESDAY If you’re the slightest bit passionate about UK manufacturing, which I have to be, the story of Brompton Bicycle Company has it all.

Designed in a garden shed (the essential characteristic of any truly British product), Brompton now sells 33,000 bikes a year to 33 countries. Most of the components are also UK made, although these days Sturmey Archer wheel hubs come from Taiwan. Some 75% of production is exported. In Beijing, businessmen keep a Brompton in the boot of their limo then hop out and unfold it if stuck in traffic.

Now, today starts with three back-to-back viewings at Hawick Crescent, enquiries from yesterday’s e-mailshot. I get the Metro to Byker, then cycle down the Byker Link which goes right past Hawick Trading Estate. There is no better bike route than this in the UK, with nice smooth tarmac downhill all the way. I’m

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there in two minutes, so early that I drop into Hoults Yard opposite for coffee. From Hawick Crescent it’s a mile or so along the quayside and into the office. Terms are drafted for two of the viewing firms. Despite best efforts, diary for tomorrow looks pretty empty.

THURSDAY A morning of tidying up heads of terms and particulars, then I cover a viewing at Saltmeadows Trade Park in Gateshead for Danny Cramman. He gives me directions to the site forgetting I’m not in the car. Keys for Saltmeadows Road are with Knight Frank on the Quayside, and the units are just across the river at Gateshead. In the car this would involve parking on the top floor of a multi-storey car park near Knight Frank, collecting the keys then driving half a mile back in the wrong direction to one of the motor vehicle bridges into Gateshead.

I can safely say the most efficient way to do industrial agency this morning is by Brompton.

At Knight Frank the folded cycle sits in the secure lobby to their building while I get the keys sorted out in reception. Then over the Millennium Bridge and onto the riverside cycle route, a mix of paths and service roads.

I head towards Gateshead town centre intending to catch a bus back to Newcastle .

However I find myself cycling on to the High Level Bridge and back to the office. It’s easy to forget how much faster it is by bike than by bus over this sort of distance. Anything under a couple of miles seems madness to fold the bike and wait at a bus stop.

Team Valley, but I’ll probably give public transport a go for those over the next few weeks with or without a Brompton. I’ll feel less of a fraud when answering public transport questions from potential tenants.

Really difficult journeys to the fringes of our area didn’t crop up. I’d dreaded any call involving an hour’s bus journey. That didn’t happen. Even Cramlington’s once an hour rail service was fine; you can use it for one leg of the journey, with the slower but more frequent buses covering the other. Occupational agency work is a fair barometer of economic activity, and for this week at least economic activity has been confined to those industrial areas where public transport is pretty good. I’ve always been sceptical about regeneration schemes that don’t involve dramatic improvements to public transport. Now I’m confirmed in this view.

Should firms run out and buy a fleet of blue and orange Bromptons? Well if there was ever

AS I SEE IT

an urge to invest in pool bikes then the Brompton Bicycle looks a good candidate.

Surprise of the week was that my trips to Byker, Gateshead and within Cramlington all involved good quality, traffic free cycleways.

I’d pictured myself buzzed by HGVs as I spin along dual carriageways. It wasn’t like that.

Signage to and from public transport hubs was non-existent. But by using online mapping I’d found easy routes bearing no relation to how you’d travel by car. Reaction from those I met during the week was uniformly positive.

Tyneside isn’t Cambridge, but attitudes and the culture are changing. Many weren’t aware I’d used a bike. In these austere times people value economy and efficiency. As Bob Dylan said: “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” I’m not looking to influence anyone else’s behaviour. Companies are, however, upping the ‘anti’ on sustainability and corporate social responsibility. I found my car free week both enjoyable and worthwhile. n

FRIDAY Into the office at 8am with a whole list of loose ends to tackle. I feel I’ve hopped from instruction to instruction all week, not finishing anything. The last cycle run is a lunchtime trip to my main meeting of the week. I meet my two kids Isobel and Sam off the Metro and take them for lunch before sending them up to my wife’s work in Jesmond. Their school is shut today because teachers are training. I reflect on the week.

I think I’ve successfully broken out of a mentality where for work trips car is always the default option. It’s a shame my travels this week haven’t taken me to Washington or

I’ve always been sceptical about regeneration schemes that don’t involve dramatic improvements to public transport. I’m now confirmed in this view

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ENTREPRENEUR

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in association with

Something special Andrew Scaife’s background is financial services but he also has the chemistry to ensure an increasingly big portion of the medical industry will develop from the North East. Brian Nicholls reports Any day now fast growing Quantum Pharmaceutical will disclose a fourth acquisition in its three years of transformation, and excite the assessors who’d already rated it the UK’s 14th fastest growing company on a Sunday Times listing.

The deal almost sealed follows its third buy which, three months ago, brought a near trebling of staff from 130 to 320. Will there be a fifth and sixth lightning strike from the Burnopfield, County Durham, based manufacturer of specials in medicines?

“We won’t grow at the same rate necessarily,” managing director Andrew Scaife replies.

But he sounds optimistic. “The business has doubled in financial terms in three years through both organic and acquisitive growth,” he summarises. “And besides negotiating this fourth acquisition we’ve put up this £4m building as well.”

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It’s elegantly modern, the main phase of ongoing site development upon a Derwentside hill. It’s a doubly high point of Burnopfield village, for it’s a living monument also to the determination of North East pharmacists not to let local jobs be siphoned to the South East unnecessarily.

And Andrew – Andy, as he’s popularly known - is clearly hedging bets about a more tempered future. “I don’t have my eye on anything in particular,” he says, referring to more buys. “Who knows though? They always come up.”

“Specials” in prescriptive medicine is a recent term in many minds. Yet there’s always been a need for and a supply of special medicines.

He explains: “People are individuals. One size doesn’t fit all.

“Some people can’t take one prescriptive medicine or another, for whatever reason.

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“It might contain preservatives, additives or an ingredient to which they’re allergic. Maybe they can’t swallow tablets and need a liquid version. So specials represents lots of very good licensed products.

“We service a valuable part of the market.

People needing specials are often acutely ill.

They tend to be very young or old.”

Anaesthetic lollipops come in various flavours for patients with painful throats unable to swallow freely. And animal product free items are made not only for vegetarians and vegans but also for ethnic markets. Methadone for drug addicts fighting their habit can be injected into cigarettes, making it easier for them to take.

It’s not only humans either. Veterinary requests are growing, particularly equine since the racing fraternity use uncommon medicines to speed the recovery of sick racehorses, >>

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ENTREPRENEUR

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We’ve meaty contracts because we offer the widest range in the market and our turnaround times are fastest. Our ethos is not to tell clients what you can do for them but ask what they want you to do whose non-starts can be costly to stables and owners.

The specials market crystallised after a landmark Peppermint Water case 14 years ago. A three-week-old boy had been given medicine of incorrect strength. Specials until then had usually been made by pharmacists in chemist shops, and this one had been made at a branch in a major chain.

In stepped regulatory authorities and insurance groups, hence the prominence of companies now like Quantum, Martindale, IPS Specials of West Molesey in Surrey, and the £4m turnover SCM Pharma which, incidentally, is relocating from Prudhoe to bigger 26,000sq ft accommodation with a new

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

cleanroom at Newburn Riverside.

Andrew says: “It made sense for the manufacture of specials to be centralised into proper laboratories, heavily regulated. The MHRA - Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency - which regulates also the like of GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and other multinationals, also regulates specials providers. So it’s a very safe industry.”

Now Quantum Pharmaceutical is more than a specials provider. He explains: “We’ve positioned ourselves slightly differently. We’re the only true one-stop shop in specials.

Pharmacies in practice either buy from their mainline wholesaler or deal with Quantum.

“We’ve meaty contracts because we offer the

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widest range in the market and our turnround times are fastest. Order by 6pm and you get it by noon tomorrow. If in stock you can order by 9.30pm and have it by noon tomorrow anywhere in the country. Quantum has changed the market.

“One used to expect three to five day turnround. Today we’ve competitors in specific parts of our business, but no-one competes with us across our entire business.”

The firm has 24,000 product lines and, partly through 35 call centre staff among its 205 employees at Burnopfield, the group meets about 1,500 orders a day. Orders also arrive online, faxed, e-faxed and e-mailed. Last year Quantum processed its millionth order. Now it’s nearing 1.5m.

Andrew says: “Our ethos is not to tell them what you can do for them but ask what they want you to do. Then we deliver accordingly.

We deal with all customers differently, designing a service for each. That’s pretty important in any industry.”

Quantum has six sites around the country, whereas eight years ago in its infancy it was camped at Tyne Metropolitan College on North Tyneside, using a former Siemens cleanroom. Martindale (now a Quantum rival) had bought the Newcastle operation of Unichem-owned Eldon Laboratories, and removed the customer base to Brentwood in Essex, and Eldon no longer existed.

Dismayed management and staff from Eldon were determined to keep a specials presence in the North East. Four ex-managers set up Quantum Specials in 2004. From the college the business relocated to Newcastle, then Burnopfield in 2006, where the site was consolidated two years later. In a £32.5m management buyout in 2009 Andrew Patterson and Phil Richardson exited, as did Phoenix Medical Supplies, which had bought a 30% stake in 2005. Ian Edge and Alison Norman remained.

Andrew joined as financial director. His background was chartered accountancy. He studied it, with law, at Newcastle University and got a start with KPMG. He audited for about two and a half years then, bored, spent around a decade with KPMG’s corporate finance team instead, running the team locally for the last three years.

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“I was selling Quantum on behalf of the existing shareholders then flipped over when a financial director was needed. Deal-doing’s good background for business, certainly for strategic thought process. “ After nine months he was commercial director then three months later reached the managing director’s chair - 12 months after joining. “you might have expected a bit more of a bedding in period, but it worked all right, I think,” he reflects.

He instigated the name change from Quantum Specials to Quantum Pharmaceutical. “I felt the old brand was a bit tired, and as we were broadening the business it was no longer simply a specials business. We had a lot of argument about whether to be Pharmaceutical, or whether we should be Pharmaceuticals.

“My thought process was pretty straightforward, I think. Pharmaceutical suggests a service business, Pharmaceuticals a product business. I see us very much a service business. I think the rest of the guys have come on aboard with this. We have lots of products but are a service business because we make people’s lives easier. “you wouldn’t believe there could be such a long debate about an S,” he says, smiling at the memory. A trace of the old logo remains in a new tricolour one - the arc there signifying the Millennium Bridge. Staff were involved in the decision. “I wanted a little of the local heritage kept but not emphasised as we’re now a national business. It’s altogether more modern and befitting.”

Initially Quantum focused entirely on market leadership in specials supply to retail and wholesale pharmacy. Acquisitions since have broadened things: 2010: A stake bought in Protomed Ltd, developer of Biodose, a monitored dosage system for patients in care homes, and in care at home.

2011: Acquired Total Medication Management Services Ltd, distributor of medication in Biodose to various sectors.

2012: Acquired Watford-based UL Medicines (ULM), a leading supplier of unlicensed pharmaceutical imports and batch made specials to hospitals.

Quantum also has a joint venture in Ireland,

ENTREPRENEUR

is now selling into Germany, and verging on the Benelux regions too. The accesses to Biodose, delivery of medicines in a container akin to an egg tray, have driven diversity.

Biodose pods, like tiny coffee cream containers, come out of the tray separately, each containing a prescribed dose of medicine.

Andrew says: “In my opinion, Biodose is the future of medicine. It’s the only one of its kind that takes liquids. Some elderly people with memory problems using bottle and spoon often can’t tell whether they’ve taken their medicine when they should have.”

“With Biodose you see if they took it. Each container carries times and dates. A barcode system can be read by i-phone too. So you can remotely monitor them.”

It will help counter more than 62,000 known incidents a year of drug error, helping offset an estimated £300m wasted annually on unused

medicines. A chip-on-the-pod version ready later this year will also tell whether or not a pod has been popped.

“If you’ve an elderly relative or if you’re a carer looking after a number of people, a text will tell if the medicine has been taken. So you can keep people at home and out of hospital longer - as the NHS wants. The cost of keeping one patient in hospital for a night is the cost of six years’ worth of medicine.

“So they don’t want people hospitalised unless they need to be. They also don’t want people returning to hospital with the same condition as before. Home care, private care, hospitals, nursing homes – wherever... you can also offer a chip service at home, paying someone to have your relative monitored to ensure they’re taking medicine as prescribed.

“In five or 10 years’ time this will be prevalent hopefully in the UK. The product is going >>

Andrew Scaife in person Andrew, born in Leeds, raised in Blackpool and senior-schooled in Cheshire, has now been in the North East longer than anywhere else and considers it home. He married Minna last New year’s Eve, has seven-year-old twin sons from a previous marriage, and lives in Gosforth.

He’s training for the London Marathon next April and wants to cycle across America coast to coast, having completed Land’s End to John O’Groats in 10 days on a bike a couple of years ago. He plays “corporate” golf and is working to attract corporate support to the NSPCC’s office in Newcastle that costs £1m to run and benefits the local community.

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ENTREPRENEUR into Germany and the rest of Europe will follow soon. We own a proportion of this business with option to buy the rest that owns the IP. It will be ours.”

Gaining access to hospitals through ULM is obviously a major advance. Quantum’s core business from 2005 had always been in retail. “We struggled to get into hospitals,” Andrew says. “It’s really difficult, very different to retail. Retail is more service focused, hospitals are more product focused.

They value service but think of it differently.

So you need a different route. “Our acquisition gave us entry to around 200 live hospital accounts. Whereas 400 lines serviced the hospital market before, we’ve 24,000. So we’re looking to put more lines behind the brand in that market, and will offer hospitals a one-stop-shop for unlicensed pharmaceuticals, whether by our own manufacture or by sourcing.

“It effectively doubles our market availability.

Hospitals is about the same size as retail. In terms of our business it’s about a fifth of retail’s size, but market size is double. Once we get penetration up we’ve access to a double market, which should be a fast growing part of our business, whereas retail is relatively mature. Further growth will come in the Bios – home care, hospitals for discharge packs and private pay as well.”

General progress made already brings awards.

The MBO itself was recognised as deal of the year at the Insider Dealmakers Awards.

Finance director Martin Such has been named Finance Director of the year in North East accountancy awards. And Andrew, 36, has two awards from the Institute of Directors – for regional Investor Director of the year and national Small and Medium Size Business Director of the year.

Of his own awards Andy chuckles and says: “The world’s gone mad.

“But they’re gratefully received. Third party recognition is satisfying, being more a recognition the business is performing well and probably bucking the trend.”

Alastair Thomson, the then IoD North East chairman, thought Andy “a dynamic and successful entrepreneur whose company makes a substantial contribution to the region’s economic fabric.” n

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Bright future: Andrew Scaife sees great potential for growth in the hospitals market

Change for the better The specials industry last November underwent its biggest change yet pricing regulation. A proportion of specials are now on a drug tariff – a change for the better, Andrew concludes, and fair to the industry, though it involved vast amounts of backroom work.

Now, having opened what may be the biggest high-spec laboratory of its kind in the country, Quantum Pharmaceutical is investing further in costly equipment to step up service levels hopefully to help raise its game from £10.8m profit last year to sales of around £55m this time round, leading to doubled profits over the next three years.

Quantum’s advisers and supporters include law firm Muckle, yorkshire Bank, Lloyds Development Capital and PricewaterhouseCoopers.“An exciting, growing, industry leading business”, Muckle partner Craig Swinhoe calls it.

A good career opportunity too. About 90% of Burnopfield staff are from the North East, and about 42% from Derwentside. Quantum works closely with colleges and universities of the region and does its own training.

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Muckle’s Law states:

The measure of your success should be through others' satisfaction.

At Muckle LLP, we aim to provide the best advice and service through the care and attention we devote to every client. Their satisfaction and support has helped us win Regional Law Firm of the Year 2012.

“The team at Muckle LLP is forward thinking and commercially minded and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them. They truly understand our business and the advice they provide is excellent.”

Andrew Scaife, Managing Director of Quantum Pharmaceutical Limited

Muckle www.muckle-llp.com

LLP WINNER Regional Law Firm of the Year

SUCCESS STORY

SUMMER 12

BRIMSFUL OF CONFIDENCE A name from the past provides the springboard for a business with a healthy looking future. Richard Wood tells Brian Nicholls how mere sight of the word Brims has proved inspiring

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

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Company names come and go – that’s business life. And death. yet occasionally a name interred rises again to win contracts and awards.

Such is Brims - or Brims Construction as of now – a name prominent in business until the early 1990s. Now it’s here again, with 130 years’ heritage, a reassuring order book and three regional awards for quality in its first six years of revival.

Soon Brims Construction will learn if it’s won a national title or two. It’s already won Project of the year in the North East Renaissance Awards decided by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Success came through its £6m conversion of the former Maynards toffee factory, a once derelict building now a creative business hub for Newcastle.

This gained a second award for best regeneration project too, the judges’ chairman - chartered surveyor David Furniss – calling it an outstanding example of regeneration that epitomises all a modern building should be.

It also won, at Leeds, the North of England heat taking it to the final of the 2012 British Council Awards for Offices, this for its £5m “best refurbished” workplace - Nepia House, home of marine insurers North of England Protection and Indemnity Association. This stands on the Quayside, just a mile or so from the Toffee Factory.

“We’re surprised to have done so well so far,” says Richard Wood.

What chance of national successes? “We’re not sure,” Richard replies modestly. “you never know, we might get something.”

He, brother Jason and Ian Clift are Brims’ revivalists. The company is purposely without a chief executive, managing director or chairman, yet is again a growing force in North East construction. All three previously worked for Tolent, the successful Gatesheadbased firm founded in 1983 by its present chief executive John Wood. John, an engineer, is also Richard and Jason’s father. Coincidences pepper Brims’ revival.

John had previously worked for Wimpey, Balfour Beatty and Brims. Richard says: “Around 2000 someone he’d worked with at Brims mentioned the name was available.

“He bought it out of sentiment, having worked there.”

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When Richard, Jason and Ian announced plans for a business, John Wood said: “I’ve got this name if you’re interested.”

“We weren’t aware he had it,” Richard says.

“It had been tucked away.

“We all thought: ‘This is a no brainer.’ For a start-up business trying to get credibility, we couldn’t really go wrong.”

It transpired Ian’s father had also worked for Brims & Co while Richard and Jason’s father was there. “We didn’t know they’d worked for Brims at all,” Richard says. The new Brims opened in 2006, getting two good years in before recession. The initial £5m turnover doubled to £10.5m. The third year dipped to £8.5m then hit £12.5m and, last year, £16.5m.

This year, with clients stalling projects through funding scarcity, Brims’ revenues may be £11m or £12m – “unfortunate,” Richard observes, “because we’d prefer a consistent progression.

Other than one year, we’ve advanced consistently so far.”

Ironically, Brims itself is cash rich. It recently provided short-term gap funding of £1m for a client urgently wanting his office development built at Blyth. “Presently, for the right plan on paper, we could gap-fund up to £2m for a client and still match that on our own behalf,” Richard says.

Credit where due (in both senses): While many banks remain reluctant lenders, particularly for construction, Brims lauds Lloyds, Santander and Handelsbanken, supporters all. The first Brims was opened at Newcastle in 1882 by David Nicholas Brims, a dock and railway contractor who’d migrated from Scotland 10 years earlier.

With WE Jackson alongside - a colleague from Edinburgh - he had Brims 1 (shall we call it?) make an early mark on Tyneside, building Dunston coal staithes (1890), the former Co-operative Building now Malmaison Hotel on Newcastle Quayside (1892) and Union Quay at North Shields (1900). >>

Lunch with care So what’s it like, lunching with competition around the family table?

“Strange,” Richard replies, laughing. “When we all worked at Tolent, Jason and I would go home for Sunday lunch and talk quite a bit with Dad about work. Now we don’t talk much about it at all. I keep telling people it’s so we don’t have to get my mum involved. She’d have to adjudicate.

“When we started Brims our path never seemed to cross Tolent’s. But, with the market slump, Tolent like a lot of bigger firms came back down the food chain and into our pool of work. We seem to go through phases where we win two or three jobs they’re after, and they win two or three we want. There’s no logic or methodology to it.

“I think some Tolent staff thought us at first a branch of their company. Then, when we won one or two jobs, I think people asked whether bids were being disclosed to each other. That’s not so.

Many find it strange. But us working separately now, from a point of view of family life, has probably been very good.

“We thought if Dad had retired at 65 we might persuade him to do some non-exec consultancy with us. But he’s 68 now and there’s no sign of that. He’s got his own concerns,” Richard adds.

Jason lives at Washington, Ian at Houghton le Spring and Richard at Gosforth, and presently apart from the Selby contract most of their work centres on the North East. But they’ve also been pricing jobs in Manchester and Huddersfield. Meanwhile there’s no revolutionary theory about having no chief executive, managing director or chairman.

Richard elaborates: “At first we were just dealing with work in hand. Jason and I had been project managers at Tolent, Ian a commercial manager. We realised after a couple of jobs we’d need to divide roles up. Now Ian as commercial director deals with finance. He’s a very good strategist. Jason is contracts director. My role is sales and business development.

“On our present tightly run ship we’ve a good skills set, bounce ideas off each other well, and haven’t really found need of a managing director. We do know we’ll be fighting our corner post-recession. We hope to be a key regional player, hopefully, even national.”

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Back home with time to revisit his roots he wrote to the new Brims, delighted at seeing the family name flaunted again. He even showed them the old boardroom table, now in his kitchen David Nicholas Brims’ son Charles William Brims later ran the company until he died in 1942. His son David couldn’t succeed him as he was being held in a German prisoner of war camp after enlisting to fight for the Allies.

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Between 1942 and 1946 the company was run by Charles William Brims’ brother Robert Wilson Brims. In 1946 he handed over the running to David Brims.

When shipbuilder Swan Hunter bought the

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company in 1961 David became executive vice- chairman, with Sir John Hunter chairman.

Between then and the 1970s – the motorway era - Brims and roadbuilding were synonymous. Brims won, for example, the M1 bridge over the River Trent, the A1/A66 Scotch Corner junction and the Gretna bypass requiring 11 bridges and dual carriageway completed between Glasgow and London. It also built part of Southampton Docks in 1966.

When shipbuilding was nationalised in 1969, and Swan’s was divested of non-core assets, Brims was sold on and continued to excel. It built Newcastle Airport Hotel in 1972, and was a noted factory builder (Dunlop, Team Valley, and Flymo, Newton Aycliffe). Abroad in the ‘70s it built Tripoli’s Grand Hotel. Less aesthetic but practical was its multi-storey car park on the north side of the Tyne Bridge.

Quite a performer, then, before shutting shop in 1993. Today’s triumvirate - Richard, 40, Jason, nearing 43, and Ian, 44 – are also setting a pace with diversity - Bishop Auckland football club’s new stadium and a health spa for Longhirst Hall Hotel near Morpeth, for example. Their biggest completion is Sunderland’s privately funded Quay West Business Park, a near £9m development where Austin and Pickersgill’s shipyard once stood.

An inspiration of developer Ian Baggett (Brims’ non-executive director) and his Adderstone Group, the 110,000sq ft design and build project was ready to occupy just as the economy buckled. Yet Quay West’s 53 units are almost fully let, and further phases, perhaps a 25,000 sq ft office building and 10 more units, may follow soon.

High profile work is promoting Brims. The Toffee Factory and Nepia House stand within a mile of each other, and Nepia House is a stone’s throw from the Malmaison, Newcastle’s first concrete framed building when Brims 1 put it up for the Co-op. “They’re all on a prominent route into the city,” Richard observes. “We had Brims banners up everywhere. It was good getting comments from people like: ‘I see you’re trying to take over the Quayside.’”

The banners at the recently opened second Tyne Tunnel, where Brims did around £2.25m worth of work, signalled a wheel turned full circle; Brims 1 had worked on the first tunnel

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SUCCESS STORY

The history boys: Members of the team that has revitalised an old North East giant there between 1961 and 1967, with Richard and Jason’s father occupied on its approach.

The present Brims, for the second tunnel, provided housing for fire control and water tanks to supply the sprinkler system.

Those tunnel banners also launched a movement akin to Eddie Stobart’s fan club on the roads. Richard explains: “We got so many calls from guys who’d worked for Brims before. People sent us centenary and other old brochures and mementoes. Newsletters also.

One guy whose father had passed away sent in a boxful of Brims memorabilia.”

Someone recalled an old Brims crawler crane abandoned at a Hetton scrapyard, from where management was able to photograph the original Brims logo font for its letterheads.

One of the Brims family, spotting the banners, told Lt Gen Robin Brims, the Newcastle-born great, great grandson of the original company’s founder. He’d been 10 when Brims 1 was sold to Swan’s. He’s since become a client and a fan. General Brims had won a DSO leading the 25,000-strong 1st Armoured Division of the British Army into Basra in April 2003. Earlier he’d served 10 years in Northern Ireland, where he was chief of staff leading up to the Good Friday Agreement. In Bosnia he’d commanded a multinational division.

He’d returned to Baghdad in 2005 as deputy commander of the Coalition Forces, and on

leaving the Army in 2007 returned to Iraq for two years as vice-chancellor of a university.

Now, back home with time to revisit family roots, he wrote to the new Brims, delighted at seeing the family name flaunted again. He showed the new management a century old Brims boardroom table in the kitchen of his new Tyne Valley home, also a 125-year-old tankard presented to the company in 1887

by Queen Victoria. There were pictures too: his father being received by The Queen on opening Southampton Docks project, also a portrait of WE Jackson, which had hung in the boardroom of Brims 1 for many years, a mysterious character until Ian Clift in research confirmed his role in the history.

Having just bought the Old School House at Dalton village for £500,000, Robin Brims invited Brims to tender for a contract worth £250,000 to renovate this 1830s building. It’s Grade 2 Listed, closed as a school in the 1950s and was converted into a house about a decade later. “We had to pitch for the job and it was probably quite close in the end. But I think Robin would have been disappointed had we not got the job,” Richard says. “We

gave a few ideas to save some money.”

The client, holder now of several nonexecutive directorships, agreed: “Their work on the Old School House would certainly have met with approval from my forefathers.”

Another historic tie emerged at Shepherd Offshore in Newcastle. Richard explains: “We did work there recently, and they’d bought a lot of Brims’ assets. Bruce Shepherd had a Brims plaque in his office, cast iron, which he’d had blasted up. It came from the old plant yard they’d bought on Hadrian Road.”

Nostalgia doesn’t pay bills though and, as Richard points out, it’s a balancing act to keep staff together in the industry presently. Brims has 25 staff and a crew of about 30 directly paid tradesmen and labourers, plus reliable sub-contractors.

“They’re a good team and we don’t want to lose anyone,” he says. “So it’s a matter of ensuring everyone’s kept productive.”

Expectations for the sector may remain tight for 12 to 18 months longer. “Until there’s more money in the market, and nervousness among clients fades, I think it’s going to be tough. But housebuilding seems busier. That normally triggers other things,” Richard adds, hinting at optimism.

About £13m worth of work has been lined up through intensive tendering since last October, and about £2m worth is on site. Starts are awaited on nursing homes at Newcastle and Selby, and discussions are ongoing about a third. A £3m office refurb on behalf of BT’s pension group is on the books for Pearl Assurance House, the tower on Northumberland Street, Newcastle. And news is awaited on projects for the University of Northumbria, plus smaller ones. The firm’s also pricing school works. Having done one-off residential projects, Brims is looking at higher-end bespoke housebuilding. It has registered a Brims Building Group. This will also tackle civils and maintenance. It’s bidding on sites with developments of six to 10 houses in mind, and expects progress by year end.

Expect more Brims banners to fly soon. n

ONLINE: Read more about the Brims story and the firm’s latest breakthrough. www.bq-magazine.co.uk/north-east

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in association with

Wanted: More energy

The issue: How can businesses improve their competitiveness and profitability through sustainable energy practices, and what are the barriers to implementation?

Jonathan Walker opened saying that after the North East Chamber had begun looking for opportunities in energy generation for the North East it had also moved into the wider issue of energy consumption. The message it got was: “Let’s capitalise on opportunities in sustainable energy, using knowledge, policy and environment.”

Brian Manning, whose company employs sustainable energy in a number of ways, confessed some cynicism – unsure if steps taken can be called sustainable yet. “We may need years to find out if they are sustainable or not. And the Government has tariffs that are ever changing or being looked at.”

Julian Atkinson feels his environmentally friendly coffin business is doing things right sustainably, but he has to remain pragmatic in business with every penny earned.

David Bowles says Inova Power, a start-up of which he is chairman, generates hydrogen on demand instead of storing it in tanks under high pressure. “You can generate it in small quantities and use it as you want it. We’ve been surprised at how much global interest

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exists in hydrogen as a serious source of alternative power.

“It can be used in all sorts of ways. Simply, for example, to mix with hydrocarbon fuels to extend the range of a vehicle and improve the engine performance, also improve the carbon footprint by about 30%. There’s a lot of work going on – by Eddie Stobart, for example, and two universities, including Newcastle, to define the best mixture.”

Inova is also about to work with a major American corporation to develop the generation of oxygen for medical situations.

It’s working too with a Scottish firm that has a system capable of generating potable water from the like of sewage, beer, and urine. Using fuel cells, it could function in remote locations where there’s no power generation.

“Hydrogen’s already a $1bn business internationally,” Bowles said. “People have been using it for about 100 years to generate power. We’ve found how to store it without pressure for use when you wish.”

Phil Hughes said tadea earns most of its money managing for organisations requiring

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Taking part Brian Manning, chief executive, Esh Group Mark Dowdall, environment and community director, Banks Group Jonathan Walker, head of membership, North East Chamber of Commerce Graham Neave, operations director, Northumbrian Water Julian Atkinson, managing director, JC Atkinson and Son David Bowles, chairman, Inova Power Craig Iley, regional director, Santander Richard Slade, owner, Battlesteads Pub, Wark Stewart Watkins, managing director, Business Durham Peter McDowall, business property director, Durham County Council Paul Fitton, head of data centres, ITPS Phil Hughes, executive chairman, tadea Alan Jones, strategic business development manager, tadea Brian Nicholls, editor, BQ Magazine In the chair: Caroline Theobald, BQ Live Venue: Blackfriars Restaurant, Newcastle BQ is highly regarded as a leading independent commentator on business issues, many of which have a bearing on the current and future success of the region’s business economy. BQ Live is a series of informative debates designed to further contribute to the success and prosperity of our regional economy through the debate, discussion and feedback of a range of key business topics and issues.

to contract for sustainable activities such as loft and wall insulations, renewable energies, sustainable transport solutions.

“I’m chairman of a youth charity. Last year we put up one of the first green roof buildings in the region, supposed to be fully sustainable.

Unfortunately we couldn’t afford the fee that would have made us Breeam outstanding. We run a wood fire boiler using chip rather than pellet and some ground source heat and PV. “Sustainability is first to go in building. People say: “We can’t afford it.” But in 20 years’ time when you’ve had to rethink your business model because energy costs have risen so highly, and you’re not generating your own energy on site, and the national grid because we’ve not invested in it so it’s not as robust as we’d like – what technology built in the 1940s would be? – certainly I’ll be a great believer in sustainable development.

“I don’t want it to reduce quality of life. But

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we must take a long term view around private market failure, some public market failure and around legislative principles that govern our activities. When you want to do something innovative, how many ministries do you have to deal with? Is there one ministry you could point to and say: ‘They’re responsible for it?’

Nobody’s talking to anyone else there.

Nobody’s got a joint agenda. Everybody’s thinking about the next election.”

Craig Iley: “I’m interested in the ethical aspect, the belief people have or don’t have because that’s what tends to drive things. Also, the green agenda generally has ability to transform the North East into one of the great hopes for declining industries. But I don’t feel it’s coalesced in a number of ways yet.

“What do we need to make this region the undisputed centre for the UK? We’ve got Nissan and its Leaf, Narec and some fantastic other things and exceptional people. But I guess a number of other regions will lay claim to similar achievements. Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Hull. So what do we need to do?

“Again, which technologies will actually prove sustainable? There’s the Betamax and VHS analogy. Neither’s around any more. Which will be the really sustainable technologies in 10 or 20 years?”

Peter McDowall: “Durham County Council owns lots of commercial property, some better than others. We’ve about 300 buildings, maybe 10% of which have been built in the last few years. We’ve paid extra fees to get Breeam accreditation and it seems money well spent, though it’s bizarre you have to spend money to get an award. We have brand new buildings we’ve put up where we try to lead by example, encouraging firms to set up and grow within the property.

“The council has decided to keep stock 20 or 30 years old, and part of my job is to ensure use of that stock. I’ve generally found the worse a building is, the harder the company inside is struggling to compete and grow. So we’re trying to see that the better the building, the better and more competitive will be the company inside.

“As a local authority we’ve some access to funding from Europe and other sources, and I think it’s in our remit to try to give businesses a better passage to growth. We’re a small

landlord in commercial terms, but have this broad agenda between buildings state of the art, hoping they will be sustainable, and the others which, mostly at least, still have a roof and four walls, a front door, a back door and windows. We actually have some buildings that don’t always have all those prerequisites of an efficient building.

“We’re trying to improve the quality of buildings, but from a very low base in some areas. So we’re still grappling with fundamentals. Sometimes businesses aren’t receptive to bigger and broader ideas – even when the roof leaks, they don’t have double glazing, and the door keeps falling over because it hasn’t been replaced for 10 or 20 years.

“It’s a matter of trying to keep the broader future developments within the practicalities of day to day managing of a property portfolio, where lots of businesses have different ideas about what makes a good stable building.

I think, in the end, businesses look at their competitors and their production costs and, hopefully, if you keep pushing the message it

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will be hopefully recognised that if you have a good building you will have a good business in there too.”

Mark Dowdall: Banks is best known as a surface mining company. We’ve operated and resurfaced over 100 surface coalmines. It’s still very much a source of energy in demand. For the last seven or eight years we’ve realised we need to move towards renewable technologies. Banks Renewables is probably the most active part of our forward programme of planning applications. We’ve so far built three major wind farms, are building two more this year and have others in the pipeline.

“We also have property development business.

Everyone so far seems to look at “sustainability” as another word for minimum environmental impact. My view is that sustainability isn’t just about minimising adverse environmental impact, but also economic and social benefits, what we do for people who live and work near our developments. We aim to operate responsibly throughout. >>

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DEBATE

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“I get the point about investing now for energy sources of tomorrow, something some people forget when they look at subsidies given for sustainable technology. There’s a need now to invest when energy is a globally traded commodity. Household bills haven’t been going up substantially because of renewable technologies but because of demand for coal, gas and oil from other countries of the world.

“I’m concerned about our lack of self-reliance or self-sustainability in energy. This will become increasingly worrying for our country. We have an opportunity to be world leaders in new technology, yet constantly we face hurdles as a business in getting timely planning permissions. There are contentious issues.

“But we need a more efficient planning system if we are to become more self-sufficient. Big infrastructure and new energy schemes we’re bringing forward often have a lead-in time from inception to implementation of more than seven years. That’s why governments at election time find it difficult to make tough decisions affecting all our futures. We need a coherent energy policy for the country that outlives the life of current governments.”

Richard Slade 15 years ago bought his two star b&b hotel in Wark. “Energy infrastructure for the area was insufficient for the hotel and other users. There’s no hope of that being improved. How could we derive as much sustainable energy as possible? We took part in Midas, a government funding of technical energy advice from specialists.

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“We went through a list. The only sustainable element suitable was biomass. We installed the first hotel biomass system known. Local planners didn’t want us to build a biomass boiler because they were worried about noise.

We had to record noise levels at a similar biomass system on a country estate. The highest noise levels recorded were from the pheasants and the sheep in the fields.

“But we had to register all these elements to get permission. We also engaged with a green tourism business scheme, started in Scotland.

We went through the whole gambit to improve the environment. Hotels and tourism businesses were renowned then for not being very good for the environment or the local population. We got a lead into areas where we should improve our performance.

“We’ve now received four national awards, including Considerate Hotel of Britain and Green Hotel of Britain. A small Hexhamshire hotel of 17 rooms, beating the like of the Savoy and the Lancaster through having developed our sustainability, led us to becoming a top class act. We’re very proud.

“We had problems over finance for investing in the biomass boiler. It was before feed-in tariffs and other renewable incentives used now. We were looking at a seven year payback at best. Quite an investment! We made it believing oil, electricity and all existing fossil fuel prices would go up.

“Our energy prices using biomass have risen on average between 90 and 140% over four years. Our use of energy through biomass

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amounted in a price increase to us of only 5% after six years. But we had to invest first. We work with schools and the local community, and grow all our own vegetables using surplus heat from the boiler and solar panels to encourage growth.

Alan Jones explained how tadea, a not for profit social enterprise, delivers energy audits for business, community buildings, and helps organisations through regulation requirements.

“We continue to broaden our footprint but also try to retain energy advice as the core.

Education is at the heart of what we do, behaviour change and helping to influence people positively.

“We provide suitable solutions for installations in business. The North East has an opportunity to become a leader in the low carbon economy. We’re working on a number of projects to foster the skills through children and young people. We’ll help anyone with a large fleet of vehicles, or individuals, offering opportunities to make their driving skills safer and more fuel efficient.”

Graham Neave outlined the extensive work Northumbrian Water does as an environmentally leading business, generating new and renewable sources of energy and water, and educating children on sustainables.

“We’re looking for more certainty about what the future holds, and the economics around some investments, certainty on government tariffs, risks associated with using new technology. We have important investment in R&D.”

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Paul Fitton’s IT company employs 100 people and serves about 600 customers in the North East from three data centres. “In our sector we work tirelessly around energy efficiency but not so much sustainable energy. Year on year improvements in IT enable us to run more for less and achieve greater economies of scale.

“Companies are choosing where to source their IT carefully so that it’s cheaper and more efficient for them. I’d be interested to know how companies of our size can attain sustainable energy practice. Presently for us it’s getting the most out of what we’ve got.

We aren’t quite there on the sustainable side of things.”

Stewart Watkins says Durham County Council has made the local economy its priority. “We’ve attracted Hitachi and a host of major companies. What comes out all the time is energy costs. If people knew what their energy costs were going to be they’d be able to plan for it. They don’t. There’s almost a dichotomy between longer term sustainability and short-term the economic drivers of what we need for the here and now.

“Pressures on businesses are very significant.

Some are from governments with their short termism. So it’s going to be about financing.

Part of our job is to help firms think about these technologies.” There are firms in the county manufacturing renewables and the council is trying to help them up the value added chain. But energy costs constrain, he says.

A point was made that businesses must accept a corporate and social responsibility for involving their customers and encouraging activity in schools.

Fitton: “Any conscience efforts we make to conserve energy are cost driven. We’ve lighting that goes off when you’re not in the room.

Basic – but cost saving.”

Neave: “You need a system that does the saving for you. We do a lot of work guiding our customers, and sustainability tops the agenda. Many people can’t tell you what they can do to save water. Until government legislation tells developers ‘these are the installations you must put in now’ people won’t choose it. They don’t seem initiated.”

Hughes said behavioural change was the best way forward, demonstrating products

and persuading children to be involved.

Amounts of resources used in any one activity could be explained.

Dowdall recommends metered water.

Neave: “Meter changes habits at first. Then old habits come back. Saving over £20 a year isn’t going to change most lives. But we fit the gear for some people who won’t fit it themselves.”

Atkinson: “If you want businesses to lead by example we’ve got to have a way of clawing investment back, and must be made aware of how this can be done.”

Neave: “There are always opportunities to look at more innovative tariffs.”

One speaker wondered where the incentive lay in having to wait nine months to get a renewable heat incentive application processed. Another said even wood costs for biomass have been rising.

Hughes: “With renewable energy you put in an application and someone starts an action group against you. A lot of these people don’t visit the countryside. They’ve a vision of what it ought to be like, and that wind turbines desecrate. Some of us like turbines. We don’t lay them along nature trails. They don’t kill the cows or hen harriers. Locally they create investment and jobs. Yet people are saying they’re horrible and noisy.”

Dowdall: “A survey has shown objectors are a very vocal minority who’d have politicians believe they represent a majority. But most people who live and work in the UK want to see us more self-sufficient and generating

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more electricity. Challenges are all part of democracy. But we want faster decisions.

We’re lagging behind the rest of Europe.

Opportunity offshore is under threat too since we don’t have infrastructural support, unlike other North European countries.”

One participant suggested it’s less easy to achieve efficiencies in an old building where, for example, you may need the light on for part of the day.

Slade: “There should be lower rateable values for going green.”

Manning: “Businesses could introduce monitors. We installed one to raise awareness.

You find what you’re using. You’re raising awareness. We have ‘electricity police’ going round to switch things off and raise awareness.

It raises managers’ awareness at least. You start to think about PV and maybe making some savings. With hire vehicles too you can save over £1,000 each using more efficient vehicles.”

It was suggested no matter how sustainable a business, it will not necessarily impress the banks.

Iley: “There are two types of funding for sustainable projects. One is for energy producing multi-million pound projects. The other is where it adds something to an existing business. The first is project finance, the other along lines of an adjunct to an existing business. That something is sustainable is great. But what does it add to the business?

If it changes the financial dynamics I’d be very sad if your bank didn’t consider it. >>

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Atkinson: “Funding’s available but we don’t know where now. A big benefit of being ‘green’ is how you’re seen by the community: economically friendly and socially aware. I use awards to the good of the business. It has grown 10 to 15% every year I’ve had it. Last year it was 20%. There’s a growing appetite for sustainability. Businesses that don’t get on to that are missing out. It helped me get money to advance the business.

Bowles: “Inova’s working with the like of Tesco and Sainsbury’s who employ some extremely bright forecasters; it will be true for Asda and others too. They’re getting extremely worried by forecasts of electricity brown-outs within four or five years. The Government believes that too. Wind farms alone won’t solve it, and we’re not investing in nuclear power stations fast enough.

“We need bold departures. Hitachi has invested heavily in a new town of 50,000 homes, each generating its own electricity.

Germans are about to do the same thing.

We work with a Swedish firm that has a very efficient and self-generating combined heating and power system about the same size as a combi boiler.

“I feel the Government must stop incentivising the current infrastructural support and incentivise energy strategies of the future.

Our world’s changing rapidly, I don’t think our politicians understand all this. Their brains are several light years away yet have to deal with the problem. Otherwise, Tesco’s fridges will stop working, as they know. Unless they find

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ways to source non-grid electricity zillions of pounds a week will go down the drain.”

Hughes: “Wind turbos are a part of the solution. With the grids will come cascading failures. We’ve masses of equipment in the home we never dreamed of 15 years ago, all using too much power, and we’re generating it in the wrong places, transmitting it very expensively too. But you can make more intelligent grid switching through IT, use more individualised information points and grant planning consent for houses only when they can generate 50% of their power on site.

Housebuyers resist paying 25 to 30% more on a house suitably equipped even though in 10 years they could get it all back. They don’t have the extra money to deposit.”

Manning: “We know, having had to drop prices, that a major barrier is the property valuer with a clipboard, basing a property’s worth on the land value.

Hughes: “The potential buyer of a well equipped property should be told that, long term, they’ll be able to afford a higher mortgage because the running costs will be so much lower.”

Bowles: “We have a system that says I must pay the same business rates whatever the efficiencies I introduce.”

Iley: “If you make things easy and relevant most people will like to get involved. People move away from pain. If you have to impose pain rather than carrot and stick, that makes a difficult decision for a government.”

Dowdall: “One thing we did was train drivers

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in efficiency, and modified our HGVs. There was a 30 to 35% saving, depending on the time of year. We got tippers doing less than 5mpg up to an average 8mpg. Drivers get a bonus for driving more efficiently.

Jonathan Walker didn’t think you could have carrot without stick, but it had to be more carrot.

Watkins: “There have been lots of good ideas here but none would win a lot of attraction at council level because they all cost money.

At the moment the austerity measures we’re suffering don’t allow us to do it.” He said it was a struggle to get funds to make property compliant with health and safety, let alone sustainable.

Jones: “We provide an audit service but at a cost to the customer now. It used to be subsidised.”

Instances were cited of state bureaucracy also impeding progress.

Jonathan Walker believed government subsidies should be widely available provided the system used is efficient and transparent.

Phil Hughes agreed the Government must incentivise manufacturers, and a long term view needed to be taken. Brian Manning pointed out that when a feed-in tariff was introduced for PV installation it wasn’t specified that it should be PV made in Britain.

Richard Slade regretted that many politicians are climate sceptics. “I don’t think there’s a common thread running through the parties that would get things moving.”

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An efficient solution...

Participants were asked what one message they would take to their peers in the business community. Julian Atkinson suggested an environmental audit would focus the minds of senior management and improvements should be made from there.

Richard Slade suggested an environmental audit could reflect on rateable value. Instead of the Government sending money through the wrong channels to the wrong areas, businesses would seriously look at themselves and hopefully act to benefit from a reformed system of rateable value.

Stewart Watkins suggested public opinion could be influenced in the same way as over drunken driving and smoking in public places.

Phil Hughes said: “You need to talk to employees and incentivise it.”

Manning: “If you could borrow money at 5% and make a return of 10% you could put in improvements.”

Peter McDowall reminded how superior restaurants and pubs that have obviously invested in themselves draw in more customers and more profit.

Jones: “Corporate social responsibility is nice to have and businesses wrapping around it are beating competitors. It’s giving them an edge in tenders. Large businesses can put teams in to develop it. But SMEs can’t appoint someone full time. They need support and help. We can give guidance.”

Walker: “The energy agenda remains a phenomenal asset to the region. We’ve assets for regeneration – wind and more water than

we require. We should tell the Government which wants a stable economy to guide businesses to this more sustainable region that doesn’t need colossal infrastructures.”

Neave: “If everyone went back to their businesses and asked who’s doing what they can to reduce waste, save water, save electricity every employee could do a lot more.

People don’t change their habits when they come to work. A long-term education process is needed.”

One participant believes public attitudes may change only when the power has gone off.

But many low cost steps are possible.

Bowles: “Scots are investing everything in new technologies and incentivising it, encouraging businesses to set up. Norwegians have invested heavily in carbon capture and in technologies costing zillions. The Norwegians have used their North Sea oil revenues very intelligently.

Carbon capture is a big issue. They’re doing it.

Iley: “Involve the next generation as social change is sometimes driven by what young people choose to adopt and make their own.”

Phil Hughes suggested revisiting the 1992 mantra on waste: reduce, re-use and recycle.

The meeting proposed an advance on five fronts: • Reduce, re-use and recycle • Have regular energy efficiency audits • Do what else you can today • Encourage “new and renewable” innovators • Educate young people. n

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In what can only be described as increasingly austere times, new ways of boosting competitiveness and profitability in business are constantly being sought.

However, some of the most cost-effective and easy to implement actions by which to do so are commonly cast aside.

The actions in question are rooted in the area of energy efficiency. In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing economic climate, it is all too often a subject which falls to the bottom of the business agenda – we find that this is especially so where SMEs are concerned. At tadea, we appreciate exactly why this is – and that’s why we’ve set up our services to help solve this problem. We believe that overlooking energy efficiency issues is something that must be changed, and that it is vital for both the financial and environmental future of the North East region.

No matter the nature of your businesses, improvements in energy efficiency can be made. However, one of the issues which came up time and time and again during this debate was that organisations and businesses – even those already interested in increasing energy efficiency – don’t know what they can do and don’t know where to start to find out more.

At tadea, we offer energy audits and assessments to help businesses gain an accurate understanding of the amounts of energy they consume. More crucially, we also provide concrete solutions to help boost efficiency and reduce overheads.

Our employee engagement team are also on hand to help ensure that this message does not just circulate at the top, but is acted upon throughout the organisation.

Following this debate, we will be focusing more closely on helping businesses to improve their sustainability – both environmentally and financially. By working towards a more energy efficient future, they will enjoy greater competitiveness and profitability as a result.

Alan Jones, Strategic Business Development Manager, tadea Limited.

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SUCCESS STORY

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SOMETHING TO SHOUT ABOUT

Philip Hardie isn’t usually the sort of business owner to shout from the rooftops, nor even the roof racks. He’s thought of as ‘an intensely private man’. But in his first personal interview he tells Brian Nicholls how the Hardie family business has achieved the 40 years it’s currently celebrating you might think a pasty and a Peugeot have nothing in common. But then, retracing four decades with Philip Hardie, you start to feel that taking charge of a family business for him was a bit like it was for Ian Gregg at Greggs too.

Ian after university never intended to take over his parents’ Gosforth bakery, now the UK’s biggest specialist retail bakery chain. Law was his goal. His father’s sudden death, however, catapulted him to the head of the business.

Philip did intend joining his father after studying mechanical engineering at Imperial College in London - and did start work at the Richard Hardie garage at 21. But he too never expected he’d be shouldered with responsibility for the company three years later.

His father, a butcher in Chester le Street, decided to start a taxi and coach sideline in the early 1950s. By the early ‘60s this had become a total business.

When the coaches proved a better prospect he abandoned taxis. He bought a cinema building at Newfield village, two miles from Chester le

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Street, converting it to a bus depot and car showroom. Works contracts powered the bus business. Wimpey was a big client, bussing workers from many parts of the region to and from Teesside construction sites. “He had one or two dabbles at selling cars too, but not very successfully,” Philip recalls.

It’s a girly thing “A lot of our new car business is coming from female buyers, particularly younger women. Girls are often more sensible than boys in their purchases. Boys may want something with alloy wheels and speed. Women are intensely practical in car buying, and they can afford what they want because they’re bigger earners than they used to be. Even in family purchases men rarely make a final decision without consulting their wives.” – Philip Hardie.

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So while he was still in London, Richard suggested that if he joined the business in due course car selling could be intensified, and he’d concentrate on coaches. Now Philip has always loved cars, developed a passion for Porsches and, towards the late 1970s, bought one. He’s had 12 in all – “but not all at the same time,” he laughs, “and not even two at any one time!”

His father went from sole trader to limited company on 1 July 1972, hence the 40 year anniversary marked now. In June 1973 Philip joined his father and sold cars. Then setback: In 1976 Richard had a serious heart attack.

He lived eight years longer but with much less involvement in the firm.

Philip met the challenge. “I was 24, fiercely ambitious then, so I was quite comfortable having to take over.

“I don’t think I had a master plan. After my father’s attack we sold the buses – not as a business. We simply sold the assets. We’d been selling Datsuns for about a year very successfully, and most of my time was spent managing that >>

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SUCCESS STORY

I was 24 and fiercely ambitious then, so I was quite comfortable having to take over.

I don’t think I had a master plan

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SUCCESS STORY through our one dealership.”

Over the years Philip’s philosophy has been: “Stick to your own principles and don’t let anyone influence you.” He admits having made mistakes, but what business owner hasn’t in a 36 year reign? And success prevails.

Stocking Datsuns early on was clever.

“New cars weren’t readily available then,” he explains. “For a Ford, an Austin or a Morris people had to put their name down and await delivery. And every extra on many cars cost more. But imports were growing, and Datsun was a more successful brand because its cars were readily available and offered customers extras as part of the package.”

Did becoming a boss at 24 require a steep learning curve? “I think business generally was very amateurish then compared with now.

So it was much easier than it would have been presently. If I did need advice my father was still around.”

Now the Richard Hardie company, besides servicing, repairing and stocking parts, has been an official Peugeot dealer for 25 years, and an official dealer in Fiat for three and a half. Between york and Edinburgh, it’s sole dealer also for the Abarth car, a glamorous member of the Fiat clan.

Abarth emerged amid the Italian motor industry’s post-war recovery in 1949. Built by the Austrian-Italian designer Carlo Abarth in Turin, it was originally a racing car. In the 1960s Abarths excelled in hillclimbing and sports car racing, mainly in classes from 850cc up to 2,000cc, competing with the Porsche 904 and Ferrari Dino.

Fiat bought the business in 1971 and by the 1990s and early 2000s Abarth was almost forgotten. But in 2007 Fiat Automobiles relaunched the brand. Its striking logo, a scorpion on a red and yellow background, is on our roads and, says Philip: “The 500 model is very popular here.

“It appeals particularly to enthusiasts.”

Its popularity is understandable. Besides relishing town work, it has a sporty interior and, despite its compactness, packs a 1.4-litre, 16-valve engine. Emissions register 155g/km, and fuel consumption is attractive.

It helps make Richard Hardie a North East Top 200 company, employing around 100 people at four centres - Sunderland, Ashington, North

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Tyneside and Durham (relocated from Chester le Street last year). The company’s latest annual turnover, £37.1m (+£0.3m) and profit £3,161 (-£30,000 approximately), indicate the

sector’s volatility still. But there’s improvement over all, the more creditable also since Peugeots and Fiats tend to rely heavily on private rather than company buys. >>

Keep it in the family So far a family business through and through, Philip Hardie wants Richard Hardie to stay that way.

His son Nick, 35, runs Ashington and Durham branches. Daughter Rachel, 30, also marketed for the business for six years till she moved last year to Dubai, where her husband Ryan Luke was in financial services.

Now they’re both in London, he through a promotion. Rachel, who’d continued her marketing career in Dubai with a construction company, will probably have resumed with that firm in London by the time you read this.

Nick came into Richard Hardie at 23. Philip wants the business to remain sustainable, giving Nick the good living he enjoys. “We already work very closely and run things between us,” he points out. No thoughts of retirement though... can’t imagine a time when he won’t work in the business. He does, at 60, look 10 years younger. Regular golf at home and abroad, and an intention to enter his 13th Great North Run this year, with Nick and Rachel, testify to his fitness.

“I wasn’t athletic at school but I did the third Run and enjoyed it so much I wanted to do it every year. I then did 10 out of 11. I did it two years ago, fancied doing it one last time last year but injured myself so couldn’t. However, here I am back in training.”

Over the years he got his time down to 1hr 42 min. Two years ago he took 2hr 22min. “So I’ve slowed a bit,” he laughs, a wee bit ruefully.

But his clubhouse chums might suggest it’s not his running time that shows his age but part of his love life; passion for Porsches has faded.

“My son had one about six years ago,” he says. “I drove it, and I think then I must have been just too old for the car! I thought to myself: ‘I don’t know what I saw in these.’” Now, if you don’t see him in a Peugeot or a Fiat, it’ll be a Jaguar – “just because I like a reasonably sized car,” he insists. He and Bernadette his wife live at Chester le Street, and take time out at their home in Portugal with friends.

This gives opportunity to swing his clubs at Pinheiros Altos in Quinta do Lago, as well as at Close House in Tyne Valley. Retirement, it’s pointed out, would enable him to refine that swing. But he declares, again laughingly, that since 17 years of effort to date have brought only frustration he sees no point in going to extremes now.

Besides, he and Nick have a more urgent job in hand. To make Richard Hardie’s 40 years very special, they’re appealing for North East businesses to join them in assembling 40 special treats for families of young patients at the Children’s Heart Unit in the Freeman Hospital at Newcastle - meals, holidays, shopping vouchers, use of cars for a weekend perhaps.

Nick’s also joining fundraiser extraordinary Ivan Hollingsworth and BBC presenter Ben Shephard in a second support event. Ivan recently ran 100 miles from Eyemouth to Tynemouth in 24 hours fundraising for the same unit. It saved his son Sebastian when, at 16 weeks, he had to undergo surgery there.

Sebastian, now three, is doing well, and Ivan, 34, has raised around £198,000 for charity Seb4CHUF. Ivan and Ben too, in another sponsored endeavour between August 12 and 14 will cycle 100 miles and swim a mile on day one, run a double marathon on day two, and do another marathon on day three when Nick will join them. Nick, a close friend of Ivan, has accompanied him on previous CHUF challenges. For Philip providing the transport support is all about helping a regional charity rewarding to children. treatsforCHUF@richardhardie.co.uk

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SUCCESS STORY

SUMMER 12

I’m not convinced electric vehicles will have a very big impact in the near future. It will be a long time, if ever, before they make a major impact Hardie’s advertising themes over the years indicate how it has built market appeal: cut prices, immediate delivery, competitive hire rates, driveaway deals, free insurance, low cost finance, cash rebate and a promise of

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fairness... All have contributed at various times. Two major factors have raised the bar now as dealers fight to retain momentum.

Scrappage (the temporary Government scheme that discounted £2,000 off new

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cars to motorists scrapping old ones), was “absolutely tremendous for us,” says Philip.

Once ended, however, it left dealers with a set of sales figures challenging to match in the return to normal.

Now the steady rise in sales VAT is nothing short of adversity.

Philip recounts: “For the first full year of the recession, or downturn, we had 15% VAT in 2009 and that, with scrappage, worked well for us. Then VAT rose at the end of 2009 to 17.5% and in 2010 to 20%. I suppose it’s having the same impact on all goods and services, being across the board, but it still must be faced up to.”

Yet Philip is confident Fiat and Peugeot will sustain his firm’s success. “The strong retail market evident in the North East represents very good propositions in what you get for your money,” he says. “They’re the kind of cars people buy for themselves.”

All dealers and manufacturers, though, must speculate about the future market, given the impending entry and long-term development of electric cars vis a vis hybrids, cars that combine two or more power sources, usually petrol and electricity, and pollute less than vehicles wholly petrol driven. Philip says: “I’m not convinced electric vehicles will have a very big impact in the near future. Hybrids will form a big part of the future, and in environmental issues as well.

“So many issues surround out and out electric cars. It will be a long time, if ever, before they make a major impact. It’s not only the range of distance without recharging that detracts, but durability of the batteries too – how many years they’ll last. And they’re a major part of the vehicle’s cost.”

Peugeot does produce an electrical vehicle now being sold by selected dealers.

But as Philip points out: “They also do hybrids – the world’s first mass-produced diesel electric hybrid, the 3008, in fact.

“They also brought out the 508 RXH, which is a very highly specified 508SW, and soon there’ll be a 508 hybrid. Again diesel, and below 100gm emissions.

“These are expected to impact greatly on the business user market. I expect we’ll stock that and do well. We’ll have it certainly in the next quarter, then develop from there.” n

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EVENT

>> Taking a seat at the captain’s table

Pitching in: Members of Newcastle United’s coaching team, including Alan Pardew and Peter Beardsley, mix with the region’s business leaders Even the most steely-eyed business people have their childhood heroes which leave them sweatypalmed and short of breath should they ever meet them in later life. And there were certainly a few star-struck business leaders in attendance as BQ joined forces with Newcastle United Football Club to host an intimate evening of dining and chatter in the club’s exclusive Chairman’s Suite. Such was the success of the Captain’s Table event - which enabled friends of BQ to share a meal and a drink or two with NUFC’s sporting and

corporate leading lights - similar events are now planned. Business leaders old enough to remember football in the 60s and 70s had the chance to remenisce with Bob Moncur, the last captain to lead Newcastle to silverwear, with the Fairs Cup in 1969. For the slightly fresher-faced in the room, perhaps the opportunity to meet star of the 80s and 90s and now reserve team coach Peter Beardsley, was the highlight of the evening. Manager

Alan Pardew also took time out from transfer negotiations and pre-season planning to join in the fun, as did chairman Derek Llambias and other board members, as well as coaches Steve Stone, Willie Donachie, John Carver and Andy Woodman. The Captain’s Table event was conceived by Bob Moncur in collaboration with BQ and is designed to forge closer ties between the football club and the North East business community. n

ONLINE: BQ talks to Alan Pardew on what business leaders can learn from the management methods employed by him and his peers. www.bq-magazine.co.uk/north-east

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COMMERCIAL PROPERTY

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Land grab for paint makers, Barclays refused, Darlington turns trendsetter, Queen’s welcome for zone newcomers, glass half full for region’s boozers, and hotels confront the elements >> Market expands A £1.5m refurbishment at Castlegate shopping centre in Stockton has stepped up the size of the marketing hall from 5,000sq ft to 8,000sq ft. The transformation has been led for owner AG Lathe Castlegate by agents Knight Frank.

The site: Where AkzoNobel will stand

>> Fashionable Darlington Shopping in Darlington is more fashionable, thanks to two new store openings at The Cornmill Centre.

Bank, owned by JD Sports, has a 10 year lease on 4,400sq ft there now, in a unit once occupied by fellow fashion retailer Quiz. And Quiz has relocated to a 1,700sq ft unit there, on a five year lease.

Quiz, founded in 1995, has 115 stores and concessions across the UK plus 51 franchises in Europe and Asia. Cornmill’s 40-plus stores include also key anchors Primark, Next, and Top Shop.

>> AkzoNobel has a home

>> £8m factory plan

The sale of land where AkzoNobel will build its new £100m UK paint making centre at Ashington has been completed.

Onsite North East, a private/public partnership between Langtree and the Homes and Communities Agency, has completed the 25 acre deal at Ashwood Business Park. Sanderson Weatherall LLP were joint agents with Colliers International.

Building, due to start this year, should be finished by late 2014. The plant will employ about 140 workers producing famous brands like Dulux. Stephen Barnes, development director at Langtree, says: “Coupled with a deal to Bernicia we concluded last year, we have transacted over 30 acres of land on the park in 12 months.”

Bernicia, an affordable housing company, is using its site to house its workforce within a 40,000 sq ft office development. Ashwood Business Park comprises 90 acres in all. AkzoNobel is the giant Dutch multinational coatings firm that bought up much of ICI. One North East transferred its development land portfolio into Onsite North East which manages, develops and invests in the sites to encourage new activity.

Darchem engineers is to invest £8m building a new factory amid hopes that growing business with China and India will raise revenues from £75m to £100m over five years. The Stillington, Teesside, company under md Graham Payne aims to wipe out the 2010 disappointment when revenues fell to £45.5m and 50 jobs had to be shed. Now 80 jobs may be created.

>> Barclays refused Barclays plans for a new 8,000sq ft Newcastle bank on three floors of the vacated Wallis/Evans shop cornering Northumberland and Blackett Streets,

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near Monument Mall have been rejected by the city council which wants to keep the emphasis on retail. Two of its three existing sites in the city centre would have relocated there.

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>> Offshore site bought The Port of Tyne has acquired 10 acres of land from the administrators of McNulty Offshore Group Holdings Ltd. The land, previously serving offshore construction, adjoins its Tyne Dock and will assist the port’s plans for further growth.

In February the McNulty Group Holdings Limited went into administration.

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COMMERCIAL PROPERTY

>> Tees EZ takes off

>> Competition for Tesco

The first businesses to enter the newly created Tees Valley Enterprise Zone are Omega Plastics and Propipe Ltd, both of which are taking units at Queens Meadow Business Park in Hartlepool.

This is one of 12 EZ sites across Tees Valley announced by the Government to help boost the economy and create new jobs. Both companies will get business rate relief for five years, during which 45 new jobs are expected.

Omega Plastics - a plastic injection moulding company - was formed six years ago and already operates in Blyth, where it will continue. It lists Unilever, Aston Martin and McLaren Mercedes among its customers, and aims to raise its workforce from 29 to 50 with the Teesside expansion.

Propipe is relocating from Hartlepool’s Park View Industrial Estate to a 16,000sq ft unit enabling the firm to expand and more than double its current workforce.

Formed in 1998, Propipe makes pipeline equipment for the oil and gas industry. It has contracts currently in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Far East and The Americas. It plans to add 24 more jobs to 20 existing.

Research by commercial property firm Lambert Smith Hampton suggests County Durham, Hartlepool and Middlesbrough are three of the top locations in the North East where companies are most likely to receive funding for expansion and job creation from the Government’s flagship Regional Growth Fund.

Shopping’s set for a shake-up at Newton Aycliffe. An Aldi store is being built in the latest phase of Freshwater’s plans to regenerate the town’s main shopping centre.

Centre manager Bryan Haldane expects it will bring “much needed” competition for the existing Tesco.

Freshwater’s Andrew Thomson says: “The £1.5m development follows the recent opening of a Wilkinsons store, and a relocation of the library. The new development will also give the impetus for a regeneration of Beveridge Way in 2013, following planning consent for a £2m public realm improvement.”

Completion of the Aldi store bringing 15 jobs and 74 parking spaces to Greenwell Road is expected around year end. It will also open up a new entrance route to the shops. Bowmer& Kirkland have been appointed to carry out the Aldi development, which is being project managed for Freshwater by GVA. Smith Price and Bisham Asset Management advised Freshwater. Latham Proctor advised Aldi.

>> A tall order Darlington’s tallest office building, Northgate House in the town centre, has been put up for sale at more than £1.6m.

The address is in the hands of agents Knight Frank and provides four groundfloor retail units together with 39,842sqft office accommodation on the second to ninth floors. It currently generates an income of £129,297 per annum.

Greg Davison, from Knight Frank’s Newcastle office, said: “For a town centre location, this is an attractive opportunity with the benefit of vacant possession.”

Jamie Brown: Pub results tally

>> Region’s pubs buck trend At a time when 12 pubs a week have been closing on average, the Endeavour Partnership has advised on six pub acquisitions over the past six months.

The Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) has found in research that between September 2011 and March 2012 most areas of the country suffered the pub decline. But Cleveland, North yorkshire, Northumberland and Tyne & Wear have shown no closures – indeed, three of the four regions have seen new pubs open.

Acquisitions on which the Endeavour Partnership, a Teesside business law firm, has acted include the multiple purchases by a local company of various trading sites from an administrator; a number of acquisitions of vacant pub buildings with a view to refurbishment and reopening following rebranding; and also negotiating complex lease arrangements.

Jamie Brown, partner in Endeavour’s property team, says: “The results of Camra’s survey are reflected in our experience of the sector.”

>> Just the ticket Tyneside’s Quorum Business Park was overall winner of the Ways2Work category at the national Business in the Community’s Awards for Excellence recognising the work done to inspire better ways of working and travelling within the North East.

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>> Builder moves in A former auction mart at Crawcrook is giving way to affordable homes for local people following a land sale to housebuilder Keepmoat.

The land at Kepier Chare was earmarked for mixed use by Gateshead Council, and the site once a venue for auctioneers Anderson & Garland has already had a medical centre with pharmacy developed upon it. Phase two will bring 35 houses.

>> Duke prevails A controversial £28m redevelopment of Prudhoe town centre by the Duke of Northumberland, through is Northumberland Estates, has been approved following a five year planning battle and amendments. New retail – a supermarket and 17 shops – plus offices and homes could bring 400 jobs long and short term.

Objections had been made over impacts feared on existing shops and homes. The local co-op expects its trade to drop by up to >>

BUSINESS QUARTER |SUMMER 12

COMMERCIAL PROPERTY 40%. But it was also argued that local people would no longer have to do weekly shops at Hexham and Newcastle. A planning report had suggested 74% of Prudhoe residents did their main shopping elsewhere.

>> Bidders for new police HQ named Five firms have been named as runners to build a new £15m headquarters approved for Durham Police Authority at Aykley Heads.

It will cover more than 5,600sq m over three floors and could be running from spring 2014.

Bidders for the work include Bam, Miller, Kier, Graham and Henry Brothers, according to construction tendering specialist Glenigan.

Peter Thompson, chairman of Durham Police Authority, says: “The new building will be more efficient to run and is expected to save £750,000 a year, being energy efficient - unlike the current headquarters building.”

Planning permission has also been given to build 227 homes on the force’s former site. This is expected to fund substantially the new headquarters.

>>KO for old HQ Billingham House, the long abandoned and derelict former headquarters of ICI, is to be demolished after the Court of Appeal dismissed a legal challenge to Stockton Council by the building’s owner, Bizzy B management.

>> Angling for success Anglers Andy Petherick, Alan Yates and Iain McGeary have developed a new link for hooks and lines. Now their firm, Links Fishing, has raised more than £1m to launch Rig Link from an Alnwick factory that was occupied by boatbuilder Alnmaritec before it moved to Blyth.

Capacity exists at Rig Link to turn out 2m items a year.

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

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>> £9bn uplift for Newcastle

>> Digital takeover

Newcastle is one of six English cities awarded a financial package from the Government to foster development zones, boost regeneration and hopefully create 13,000 jobs.

Some £92m will be spent on East Pilgrim Street, the Science Central site beside St James’s Park and an area around the Central Station. Investment will also go into Gateshead Quays and Baltic Business Quarter. The Department for Transport has also promised to improve the A1 Western Bypass from 2015.

Government and city together aim to attract £500m of private investment also for the marine and offshore industry where 8,000 jobs is the goal. North Tyneside Council, owner of the historic Swan Hunter shipyard site at Wallsend, is already seeking a partner to co-invest and turn it into a green energy hub with maybe 1,000 jobs. The council offers a contract of up to £50m to a suitable developer or consortium ready to build units for the renewable energy and offshore industry.

The six cities on the government help list have temporary use of business rates from within the zones and pay the state back later.

• Lugano Group has recently completed regeneration schemes in Newcastle at Gallowgate and Grainger Street, bringing underused buildings back to life. The schemes attracted a national retailer to Grainger Street and occupants to all 21 new apartments in Gallowgate within weeks of completion.

The former Cleveland Club in Middlesbrough, once the National Provincial Bank, has reopened as Gibson House at Boho 4, offering office space in the town’s digital quarter. Built in 1872, the Grade II listed landmark has had a £1m refurbishment, carried out by Green Lane Capital of Middlesbrough, run by brothers Chris and Andy Preston.

>> Estate expansion Cestria Community Housing has taken 17,000sq ft more space at Bowes Offices on Lambton Castle estate and Biddick Hall near Chester le Street.

>> Teesside move Grain trading and storage specialist Tynegrain has invested £4m in a new 40,000 tonne grain store on Teesside. This is on the Wilton site near Ensus which it hopes to benefit from when that comes back onstream.

It has meanwhile enjoyed record profits and has raised turnover from £96m to £174m.

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>> Something old, something new Offers are being considered through agents GVA for the purchase of the Grade II listed Old Shire Hall at Durham City. The three story brick building dates back to 1896.

>> SME centre opens Work on a £5.4m three-storey home for 35 SMEs has been completed where Circatex circuit board factory operated before its closure with a loss of 850 jobs at South Shields in 2001. One Trinity Green is being marketed as one of the “greenest” buildings of its kind anywhere.

>> Office high Berkshire Property Asset Management has let a 2,260sq ft suite at Maritime House, overlooking Hartlepool Marina, to Siemens at £11.06psf - a new high in the town’s office rentals.

>> Now then, now then The former police station and courts at Ashington have been converted into office suites,conference facilities and a performing area.

>> Headed south Scottish solicitors Simpson and Marwick have moved into Newcastle with a 10 year lease on 3,000sq ft four floors up at Collingwood House in the city centre.

SUMMER 12

COMMERCIAL PROPERTY

Ready to go: Key players in the Hotel Indigo launch (left to right) are George Liddle, restaurant and bars manager, Melissa Horberry, sales manager, Samantha Davidson, managing director of Horizonworks Marketing, Adam Munday, general manager, and Georgia Linscott, business development manager of Horizonworks Marketing

English first: A projected impression of how Newcastle’s Motel One will look from High Bridge and from the inner landscaped courtyard in Newcastle

>> Hotels confront the elements Property investor and developer Lugano Group has agreed lease terms with Motel One, an ascendant European hotel group.

The budget operator has 40 hotels in Germany and Austria and two coming up in Edinburgh, but Newcastle will be England’s first.

It will retain existing frontage of High Bridge and create a new build block behind the street in Half Moon Court.

If planning permission is given, building will begin in October for completion by spring 2014. Richard Robson, Lugano Group director, says Lugano plans also to improve the area opposite the site of Motel One, and has started talks about external appearance with High Bridge tenants.

Though one in five hotels in the North East is

>> Express sale A former petrol station developed into a Tesco Express store in Middlesbrough has been sold for more than £640,000 in a deal involving agents Knight Frank on behalf of developers CircleRed Properties and Hellens. It reflected a net initial yield of below 6.5%.

thought to be under threat of failure, the region’s industry is still one of the best UK performers in the sector.

Newcastle’s hotel occupancy is among the best of any UK city, with room occupancy there 78% against a national average of 65%, according to Visit England.

And a new £20m Hotel Indigo has entered the city competition. A four star boutique hotel brand from InterContinental Hotel Group, it has 148 bedrooms.

It replaces the former Eagle Star building in Fenkle Street, near The Assembly Rooms.

A feature of the development by Sanguine Hospitality Ltd is a Marco Pierre White Steakhouse Bar & Grill.

The poor summer weather is what presents

>> Digital Takeover The former Cleveland Club in Middlesbrough, once the National Provincial Bank, has reopened as Gibson House at Boho 4, offering office space in

the threat to North East hotels, says insolvency trade body R3. About 3% are estimated to be at high risk over the next 12 months.

But only hotels in yorkshire, Scotland and London have a smaller percentage in negative reckoning. A new boutique style hotel of eight guest rooms has been developed and awaits a buyer at 11 Houndgate, a Georgian property in Darlington.

The work of local builder Bussey & Armstrong, it is now on the market through Carver Commercial. It was once a Quaker girls school and later housed the town’s register office.

Also on the market is the Best Western Grand near Hartlepool Marina, with a £2.5m label.

It has 50 rooms and, say agents Christie & Co, an average occupancy of 72%.

the town’s digital quarter. Built in 1872, the Grade II listed landmark has had a £1m refurbishment, carried out by Green Lane Capital of Middlesbrough, run by brothers Chris and Andy Preston.

ONLINE: For breaking commercial property news and other business stories and insight from the North East visit: www.bq-magazine.co.uk/north-east

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BUSINESS LUNCH

SUMMER 12

in association with

North East

An entire career spent on the frontline of the most challenging of sectors has given Brian Manning a clearer vision of what’s really important in life, as Andrew Mernin discovers

Beyond the builder’s yard Brian Manning must be mellowing with age.

Having spent almost 40 years growing battle hardened by the intensely competitive building sector, he sees his future more in community centres and primary schools, than perhaps construction sites.

The chief executive runs Esh Group, which lays claim to being the largest indigenous construction company operating in the North of England.

If you’ve never met or even heard of Manning, but feel he looks familiar, it’s little wonder.

Few are as active as him and his organisation when it comes to tackling community, skills, economic and social problems across the North East. Schoolchildren, the unemployed,

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

school leavers and young offenders are all among the many supported every year by the empire that has emerged from a small village near Durham. And Manning likes to get out from behind his desk to see what’s really going on. “You just lose touch with what’s going on around you if you don’t,” he says.

But in future he sees his role becoming increasingly focused on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and less on the cut and thrust of winning and delivering work. And he’s even prepared to step aside to let younger generations handle to top level stuff at Esh as a result.

“I have less of an operational role now. When you’ve got ambitious younger people working

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for you, you’ve got to satisfy those ambitions.

They want to get more involved with managing the business and if they’re good at it, why not? I do see doing more CSR activity as a progression in my role.”

When Manning first joined Esh (Lumsden & Carroll as it was then) in 1990 its annual turnover stood at around £3m. By the turn of the century it had passed the £20m mark and in the subsequent years seemingly unhindered growth followed.

This transition from SME into a business employing “the thick end of 1,000 people” has today left Esh caught in the middle ground between a small regional firm and a national heavyweight.

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And tackling the challenges that come with this mid-cap status is something of a specialist subject for Manning. In fact, after lunch he’s off for a meeting at Northumbrian Water HQ to discuss just that. It’s also become a common theme in his role as an influential figure within the NECC. “Mid-caps are the heart and soul of the economy,” he says. “As you get bigger you’re competing with national contractors and that’s really the issue.”

Esh, like other mid-caps arrested between two worlds, is currently plotting its emergence into the land of true national players. Success outside the region, particularly in Yorkshire and Cumbria, shows those plans are already coming into fruition.

But making the jump out of the mid-cap category is a tricky manoeuvre, made no easier by what Manning sees as often unfair procurement conditions.

“National procurement tends to favour national firms. For example there’s one framework where they insist that people have half a billion pound turnover to be on the framework and yet the jobs can be anything from £2m and £20,000.

“I don’t know whether we’ll ever be able to compete with the [huge] nationals because it’s a treadmill and they are always getting further away.”

Talk turns to the disastrous handling of the Olympic security contract by G4S as proof that bigger isn’t always best. More digits on the balance sheet do not guarantee a more successful delivery.

“They put all their eggs in one basket with G4S. If they’d appointed five companies to do that, would that necessarily have been a bad thing? Why didn’t they break it down?

“In construction they tend to aggregate a load of contracts together so they might put the building of ten schools into one contract and that rules us out because you might be talking about a £100m to £200m contract and we’ve only got £170m turnover. Maybe they should be going back to putting things into smaller pieces. They’ll argue that it’s more cost effective the other way, but is it?”

“What I would say is that I do think there’s light at the end of the tunnel. There is a lot happening in the North East in terms of

BUSINESS LUNCH

I have less of an operational role now.

When you’ve got ambitious younger people working for you, you’ve got to satisfy those ambitions procurement and I think the local authorities in the region have become very much alive to it since 2008. I’m not one for normally praising the local authorities but I do think they’re making an effort.”

Esh’s bid to increase its national prowess has been significantly aided by the recent rebranding of its subsidiaries into one over-arching name.

“To get work in each sector we have do a PQQ [pre-qualification questionnaire] and jump through all the hoops. With the formation of Esh Construction we can now put all that turnover together as Esh Construction. That’s more powerful and we can bring together the experience of all the brands.”

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Esh Construction was formed last year, incorporating Esh Build (previously Lumsden & Carroll Construction), Esh Property Services, Stephen Easten Building, Lumsden & Carroll Civil Engineering and Esh Facility Solutions.

Trust within the region of the familiar green livery of Lumsden & Carroll meant it had to stay and it remains the group’s civil engineering brand.

Outside the North East, the rebrand has already paid off. In January Esh won a £5.5m contract to design and build a construction skills training centre at Lakes College, Lillyhall, near Workington. The Cumbrian contract comes on the back >>

BUSINESS QUARTER |SUMMER 12

BUSINESS LUNCH of Esh’s Kendal office opening in 2010.

Expansion into Yorkshire, where Esh has a Leeds office, has also contributed to growth in none-North East-based earnings from around £15m to £45m since 2008.

Standalone contracts in other parts of the country continue to come on board but Yorkshire and Cumbria have been outlined as key markets to help alleviate pressure from its core North East business in these uncertain times.

“We’re really trying to punch above our weight in these areas. What you tend to have in Cumbria is the nationals, who come in and do the likes of Sellafield and the bigger jobs then you’ve got the local contractors. We sit somewhere in the middle.”

CSR has played its part in gaining trust in these emerging markets for the group. “We’re not just there to go into a region and pick up a £5m job and leave, we want to put our roots down,” he says.

Initiatives such as its competition in Leeds which encourages local residents to contribute to their community centres alongside its myriad of other community, educational or skills-focused projects are all “win win”, says Manning; for the brand and the people they help.

Manning, who himself sits on the board of the Tyneside Cyrenians charity, is the hands-on leader behind Esh’s CSR strategy. “It’s the bedrock of what we do,” he says.

And he believes we are now in the throes of a somewhat surprising resurgence of CSR activity in the North East.

“It’s strange because more and more people are seeing the value of CSR. More and more companies are getting involved even though we’re in recession because they’ve got to think long term and really think of the reputation of their business.”

Although CSR is all well and good, says Manning, there is always a danger that trying to do too much extracurricular work can result in staff needs being neglected. Not that Esh has any sweeping problems with staff morale or its reputation as an employer. After the recession hit in 2008, the firm made regional headlines as its directors all took a 20% pay cut. At a time when the public was fuming at payouts for failed banking execs – such as

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

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In business we say that you have to climb the wall, then get to the landing and maybe cling on for a bit and then climb again Northern Rock’s Adam Applegarth, who was rewarded more than £750,000 for his efforts – Esh was a shining example that not all at the top had lost their heads.

With a community-conscious and grounded Shields lad like Manning in the boardroom, however, perhaps it’s little wonder that Esh acted as it did. The 20% has now been returned to the directors’ pay packets, although a pay freeze has been in place at the top of the organisation since.

“A £50,000 pay cut is nothing when you think about it. When I first joined the business I was earning £25,000. So I thought we really needed to make some sacrifices.

“When we went into recession it was a shock

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to the system. We went from a business that was turning over £150m and making a £10m profit for two or three years, to suddenly finding ourselves in the midst of a storm.”

In the space of a year, the company’s £10m profit had diminished into a £6m loss as the construction industry – and particularly the market for speculatively built housing – bore the brunt of the global financial meltdown.

In Manning’s 22-year stint at Esh, the 17 years leading up to the recession were each marked with growth. Since 2008 however, after returning to the black, the company has remained on a relative plateau with little sign of any dramatic change in fortunes on the horizon.

“In business we say that you have to climb the wall, then get to the landing and maybe cling on for a bit and then climb again. But at the minute we’ve climbed up and found an entire flat landscape.

“My view is that we’ve got to get ready for when it does pick up again, not waste this period. It’s four years now that we’ve been on this plateau and we’ve not got to waste time.

So where does the company see the major growth areas of the future?

“That’s a bloody good question,” he says with a grin.

What about renewables?

“There’s no clear visibility in that area and it’s all a bit foggy,” he says.

Esh is involved in the installation of solar PV panels and has a focus on the renewables market but it has not gone full throttle into the industry. “There’s a market for renewables but it’s been very slow to emerge where best to invest.”

No lunchtime recessionary chatter is complete without the next question – when will the industry return to growth?

“I wish I knew. That’s the six billion dollar question. I’ve heard one theory that the conditions we see now are actually the norm so we need to get used to them. I hope it’s wrong.

“I don’t think things will ever be as good as they were pre-2008 but maybe things will pick up slightly.”

Pick up they may, or, if the gloomier Euro-conscious analysts are to be believed, things may diminish. >>

Nam

4818

Until Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had reached the summit of Everest, they would not rest. (Kathmandu, 1953.)

Why should Tenzing Norgay be showing your bank the way forward?

It has been said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

We suggest there is a third component.

Collaboration.

As Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay proved to the world, even the most extraordinary talents need support if they are to achieve peak performance.

This is as true of the world of finance, of course, as it is of mountaineering.

Because as we all know, the economic climate can be as fickle as the rarefied air of the Himalayas.

The pitfalls of ignorance as treacherous.

The rewards of success as exhilarating.

So until we’ve helped our clients in their efforts to achieve their financial ambitions.

For more information about UBS Wealth Management please contact Nick Swales on +44-19121 11000

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We will not rest

The value of an investment and the income from it can fall as well as rise as a result of market and currency fluctuations and you may not get back the amount originally invested. www.ubs.com/wewillnotrest Names, images and/or references to third parties used in this advertisement are used with permission. Location and date stated in the legend indicate where and when the image was taken. © UBS 2011. All rights reserved.

4818 Hillary Brand ad Newcastle 11-7-11v3.indd 1

11/07/2011 15:50:55

BUSINESS LUNCH But whichever way the market moves, Esh has dug its foundations deep and on the sturdy ground provided by a strong cash balance. In short, says Manning, the company is going nowhere, unlike some of its peers that have crumbled into the dust in recent years.

“In 17 years here profit was the driver and cash followed. But now, if you’re only making £1m to £2m profit it’s sometimes difficult to detect the cash.

“You have to make sure that the cash follows the profit and, because margins are so light in construction at anywhere between zero and 2%, you have to be very careful that you are converting that profit into cash.”

Esh reported its year-end bank cash balance at £28m at the last official count last September and Manning says it changes little from year to year – a factor which gives him great confidence in the firm’s future.

“We are in a position to withstand whatever storms come at us, so we want to make sure we get ourselves right and really ready to grow again.”

In the meantime, Manning says the company is undergoing a grand-scale “tidy up”. This isn’t a sugar-coated description of cuts to the workforce, however, but more of an holistic change to the business.

“When you’re growing it’s sometimes a case of onward Christian soldiers,” he says, arm aloft.

“But we’re now taking time to look back at our systems, processes, HR and payroll to do things more efficiently. That’ll make us leaner going forward.”

Speaking of lean, what of his new gravitydefying friends down on the basketball court?

Most sporting sponsorships marrying the corporate-clothed with those in lycra tend to be pretty cold affairs. One side of the deal gets cash to develop teams and stadia, and the other receives advertising space in abundance.

A sense of mutual warmth emanates from Esh’s relationship with Newcastle Eagles Basketball Club, however, through Manning’s passionate description of his now-found love of the game.

Perhaps stereotypically for a North East executive, the Esh boss’s down time was dominated with football and golf before catching the basketball bug. Then, in the wake

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of former sponsor Northern Rock’s demise, Esh stepped in to support the club as shirt sponsor after some years of working together.

“Basketball is fantastic. Like anything we do, if we sponsor something we’re going to go and have a look at it and get involved.”

And the company sees a lot it likes in the way the club operates especially its ability to compete nationally – just as Esh intends to increasingly do.

“There is a link,” he says. “The Eagles are a local business trying to punch above their weight, they’re winning trophies and there’s really strong chemistry between us.”

With the Eagles now officially the most successful team in British Basketball League history, maybe the winning mentality will rub off on Esh as it too looks to overthrow the national competition blocking its route out of the mid-cap zone. ■

Famous for good reason: Café 21 “Dessert?” asks the waitress. Silence and eye-balling follow. Neither wants to say yes if the other says no. But the first two courses were so good and we’re both thinking the same thing.

Common sense prevails and before long a chocolate tart with cinder toffee and a lemon and yoghurt panna cotta arrive to be devoured in an instant.

Café 21 is a well known name among business types in these parts, located as it is in the heart of Newcastle Quayside’s legal and finance hub. For Brian Manning this is the place for family treats in his household. But it’s also the venue for deal chatter, client impressing and high-level get togethers in the working week. We’re here for the modern bistro’s lunchtime menu – £16.50 for two courses and £20 for three. We’ve just missed the summer graduation rush, we’re told, so instead of a sea of wide-eyed diners filling up at mum and dad’s expense, the restaurant is reasonably quiet with holiday season upon us.

The provençal tomatoes are the star of Brian’s buffalo mozzarella starter, he says, while the mackerel with elderflower and gooseberry chutney makes for a tingly combination befitting of a sunnier day than this miserable Thursday afternoon.

Brian orders slow-roast sea trout with lemon and cream dressing for his main. “It’s certainly very summery. It’s just a shame the weather couldn’t match it,” he says over a clean plate looking at the gloom outside. Equally seasonal is the summer vegetable risotto with poached duck egg, which is packed with greens and light enough to leave some room for dessert – just.

Café 21 Trinity Gardens, Quayside, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 2HH www.cafetwentyone.co.uk Tel: 0191 222 0755

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North East

The Audi A6.

Enhanced driving.

This is what we mean by enhanced driving; A lightweight design, fuel efficient engines, advanced driver assistance and a high level of technology as standard. Technology such as SD card based Satellite Navigation and optional Wi-Fi that lets you and your passengers access the internet on the move.

To arrange a test drive contact your nearest North East Audi Centre or visit www.northeastaudi.co.uk

Available from only £359 per month.

Newcastle Audi

Tyneside Audi

Wearside Audi

Teesside Audi

Scotswood Road, Newcastle upon Tyne NE4 7YW. Tel: 0843 248 7228 (local rate)

Silverlink Park, Wallsend, Newcastle upon Tyne NE28 9NT. Tel: 0843 248 7218 (local rate)

Stadium Way (Opposite Stadium of Light), Sunderland SR5 1AT. Tel: 0843 248 7248 (local rate)

Brooklime Avenue, Preston Farm, Stockton on Tees TS18 3UR. Tel: 0843 248 7238 (local rate)

email: enquiries@newcastleaudi.com

email: enquiries@tynesideaudi.com

www.newcastleaudi.com

www.tynesideaudi.com

email: enquiries@wearsideaudi.com

www.wearsideaudi.com

email: enquiries@teessideaudi.com

www.teessideaudi.com

Business users only. Typical example: The New Audi A6 Saloon 2.0 TDI SE (177PS) Manual. 3-year contract hire, 35 monthly rentals of £359 (plus VAT), initial deposit of £1077 (plus VAT), 10,000 miles per annum, total contract mileage 30,000 miles, excess mileage 6p per mile (plus VAT). Further charges may be payable when vehicle is returned. Indemnities may be required. Subject to status. Available to over 18s from participating North East Audi Centre’s only for vehicles ordered before 31st August 2012 (subject to availability). Offer may be varied or withdrawn at any time. Specification correct at time of publication. Prices quoted and examples shown are correct at time of publication (July 2012) and do not take into account any variation to government taxes or charges arising after the date of publication. Terms and conditions apply. Audi Finance, Freepost Audi Finance. Model shown for illustration purposes only.

Official fuel consumption figures for the Audi A6 range in mpg (l/100km): Urban 26.2 (10.8) - 48.7 (5.8), Extra Urban 42.8 (6.6) - 64.2 (4.4), Combined 34.4 (8.2) - 57.6 (4.9). CO2 emissions 190 - 129 g/km.

MOTORING

SUMMER 12

HEADED FOR QUALITY STREET Tim Luckhurst Matthews, partner with Quantum Law, applies hard and soft treatment to test the fuel efficiency of a sporty Lexus vying for recognition in top bracket motoring As an avid viewer of BBC’s excellent Top Gear, and in true James May style, I confess sometimes to enjoying the challenge of just how many miles to the gallon I can get from

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

a car with a dashboard computer readout.

Recently in a Fiat 500 1.3 diesel sport, and with some very delicate right footwork, I managed 99.9mpg, admittedly with lots of freewheeling.

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I might have achieved more but 99.9 is the maximum to which the computer would go.

On brisk urban driving I still achieved over 55mpg which is not at all bad. At the other

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end of the scale, I admit to being something of a petrol head, and on Sunday had another GP kart win at North East Karting’s excellent Warden Law Circuit near Sunderland, which sets me up nicely for a hectic week in my 9 - 5 (how I wish I could actually, if only once, achieve those hours!) job as a Solicitor. Work hard but play harder was a maxim taught to me by a well-known entrepreneur many years ago, and in many respects I still think he was right.

So what on earth does all this have to do with the Lexus GS450h F Sport? Well, let me start with the James May bit. Press the brake and the start button, and if there’s enough charge, this being a hybrid, it’s total silence. Even more impressive, if you’re gentle with the right foot, is the equally silent glide as you pull away – right up until the moment when the engine wakes up and, well to me at least, spoils it a

bit. Don’t get me wrong, I like Lexus cars. I had a GS eleven years ago for a while, and the LS remains for me one of the best kept secrets in luxury motoring. Above all however it was the excellence of the Lexus after sales customer service that remains the abiding memory, and how I wish some other prestige motor manufacturers were even half as good.

So how was the GS450h F Sport? My nine year old son thought the front, below bumper level, was reminiscent of a Lamborghini Aventador, that the wheels were similar to those on a Maserati I’d been driving recently, and that the front day time driving lights were very Audi. My wife on the other hand, when I’d covered up the badges and sat her in the driver’s seat, thought it was another brand, which in a £50,000 plus car was a bit of a blow. When I asked her why, she said simply that it smelt of plastic not leather, and had

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MOTORING

plastic dash inserts. I pointed out that the dash inserts were actually aluminium.

I liked the multimedia display, which would keep Mr May happy too with its performance data displays betraying precisely how you’ve been driving recently! Its centre console mounted mouse is much easier to use than the BMW 5 Series knob, which I have to admit I’ve never truly mastered. I liked the digital dash, which looks like an analogue dash but isn’t. I admit I only realised this for certain after half an hour or so of trying to achieve some serious fuel consumption figures, and then switching from Eco to Sport and Sport+ mode, whereupon the Eco dial changed to a Rev Counter.

I drove it also at night when the instrument and media light show is very impressive, as too is the sound system. However, whenever I got out of the car, my hands were tingling a >>

BUSINESS QUARTER |SUMMER 12

MOTORING

SUMMER 12

What Bob says...

little as a result of a vibration through the steering wheel, which I suspect is a consequence of the ultra low profile tyres on the sporting 19 inch rims and toggling between Sport and Eco mode.

By the time the car was returned, I’d driven it both gently and aggressively, changing from Eco to Sport and Sport+ modes regularly, with both urban and motorway driving, and still got an average of nearly 30 mpg which I reckon is pretty good. I suspect if I used my right foot rather more gently, I could do a lot better.

Would I buy one? The Lexus GS450h F Sport is clearly aimed squarely at competition from BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Jaguar, to name but a few, in a market where performance, quality, and that certain wow factor are paramount. If I drove regularly in London, its hybrid credentials would make it a serious contender to avoid the scourge of the congestion charge, and let’s not forget that other cities are already committed to moving in the same direction. n

Even more impressive, if you’re gentle with the right foot, is the equally silent glide as you pull away

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

The Lexus GS450h F Sport that Tim drove is priced at £50,995 OTR and was provided by Lexus Newcastle, Tel: 0191 215 0404.

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It’s hard to believe that Lexus has been around since 1989.

Launched in the USA although the brand has gone onto become the largest selling premium Japanese brand. Lexus’s plan was to build a car to take on the Mercedes S Class. Work on the LS started 1983 and it went on sale in 1989. In America, Lexus are market leaders; their reliability and levels of customer service have put the car at top of the JD Powers survey.

Once Lexus took on the Mercedes S Class, they then set their sights on the BMW 5-Series and the GS arrived.

This 4th generation GS has marked a change in the company’s thinking. Its downfall’s were the mediocre handling and a lack of diesel engine in the range. The designers have made the car look sportier, especially the F Sport Guise.

The car has been launched with two engine choices, a 2.5lt V6 engine which produces 207bhp or 3.5lt V6 - 338bhp Hybrid. The Hybrid option gives the car an electric motor and throttle response in Sport and Sport+. When these setting’s are chosen the power gauge turns into a rev counter. Advantages are the electric motor which has excellent CO2 figures, a high specification and all cars have ventilated leather seats, keyless entry, automatic gearbox, 10 airbags and reversing camera. The camera is the best I have ever seen. The quality of the cabin is plusher and a colour screen and a Lexus clock dominate the dash. Unlike BMW’s I Drive System, Lexus have stuck with their Remote Torch.

Take it from me, Lexus GS is a serious competitor.

Bob Arora is an independent car reviewer and also owns Sachins restaurant on Forth Banks, Newcastle. kulmeeta@hotmail.com

Amazing. It’s in full-hybrid engines that are capable of over 44 mpg while delivering up to 343 BHP. It’s in ensuring exceptionally low emissions without compromising performance. And it’s in making both the new GS and RX available as exhilarating F SPORT models for the very first time.

At Lexus we don’t stop until we create amazing.

Lexus Connect Contract Hire – Business users only

Model

Initial rental

Followed by 35 monthly rentals of

GS 450h F SPORT

£4,416.00 + VAT

£736.00 + VAT†

RX 450h F SPORT

£3,888.00 + VAT

£648.00 + VAT†

Experience amazing at

LEXUS NEWCASTLE 22 Benton Road, Newcastle NE7 7EG 0191 215 0404

www.newcastle.lexus.co.uk

RX 450h prices start from £44,571 OTR. GS 450h prices start from £44,995 OTR. Models shown are RX 450h F SPORT at £52,605 and GS 450h F SPORT at £51,605, both including metallic paint at £610. Price correct at time of going to press and includes VAT, delivery, number plates, full tank of fuel, one year’s road fund licence and £55 first registration fee. †Available on new sales of GS 450h F SPORT and RX 450h F SPORT when ordered, registered and financed between 1 July 2012 and 30 September 2012 through Lexus Financial Services on Lexus Connect Contract Hire. At participating Lexus Centres. Advertised rental is based on a 3 year non-maintained contract at 10,000 miles per annum. For Business users only. Excess mileage charges apply. Other finance offers are available but cannot be used in conjunction with this offer. Terms and conditions apply. Indemnities may be required. Finance subject to status to over 18s only. Lexus Financial Services, Great Burgh, Burgh Heath, Epsom, Surrey, KT18 5UZ. Subject to availability. Lexus Centres are independent of Lexus Financial Services.

GS 450h F SPORT fuel consumption and CO2 figures: urban 40.9 mpg (6.9 l/100km), extra-urban 49.6 mpg (5.7 l/100km), combined 45.6 mpg (6.2 l/100km). CO2 emissions combined 145 g/km. RX 450h F SPORT fuel consumption and CO2 figures: urban 43.5 mpg (6.5 l/100km), extra-urban 47.1 mpg (6.0 l/100km), combined 44.8 mpg (6.3 l/100km). CO2 emissions combined 145 g/km.

MILJUS ON WINE

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MILJUS ON WINE

GOSSIPY AND GREAT A summery Kim Miljus, md of Capital FM North East, finds a palatable lead-in to a good girly evening When asked to do a wine review by BQ my first instinct was to say no (my current tipple is a strong vodka and cranberry!) my second instinct was to say yes, as I rather romantically told myself I could comment on the liquid I was consumming.

My romantic notion included sitting outside on a warm summer’s Friday evening after a busy week at work, to sip and savor the chosen grape juice. I hoped one would be a Sauvignon Blanc, a summer staple and it was.

Just when I thought I would have to pretend summer was here, it arrived! So last Friday evening wine chilled to perfection, sun shining and girl friends gathered for a good girly gossip on a Friday night, I filled my glass.

The Pilot SB 2010 comes from the Alpha Domus winery which was established very recently in wine years in 1990 but has fast become award winning. The Pilot selection offers superbly priced, well balanced wines that show pure varietal character and ripe fruit flavours. They are stylish, approachable wines with soft acids and supple tannin. These characters make them food friendly and ready to enjoy now.

I did enjoy it. As it met my taste buds it was fresh, light, and crisp. I’m not sure I could really taste the pear, lime and gooseberry with tropical notes, but I enjoyed this wine very much. It really was summer in a bottle, ideal

with salads, seafood, other light dishes and girlfriends!

At £10.49 it costs more than I would usually pay, but I could appreciate spending a little bit more for such a delicious treat.

The red wine was a bit more challenging for me. My bottle was £8.99 Wyndham Estate, Bin 555 Shiraz.

More than 170 years ago George Wyndham planted Australia’s first commercial Shiraz vineyard and began handcrafting intensely flavoured wines. Today Bin 555 is the definitive Australian shiraz, layered with rich generous plum and berry flavours.

South eastern Australia 2008.

It’s a distinctive full bodied Shiraz with rich plum and ripe berry fruit flavours along with a hint of spice.

Perfect complement to steak and is also well suited to other red meats, pizza, tomato based pasta dishes and hearty casseroles.

It’s what I would call a BIG wine, defiantly full flavoured, which made the first mouth full very intense, I think that was the spice coming through - which is a bit surprising, then the second waft was plummy fruit. I found this wine a bit too heavy for me. It’s more of a wine to have with a big meal, the big flavour would stand up to big flavours in a meal.

Perfect with pasta, red meat and cheese I’d say.

On a warm summer’s evening I preferred the ease and approachability of the more friendly white Sauvignon Blanc, served with good friends of course. ■ The wines Kim tasted were, Wyndham Estate Shiraz Bin 555 2008, £8.99 and The Pilot by Alpha Domus Sauvignon Blanc 2010, £10.49, both available from Fenwick, Newcastle.

The Pilot selection offers superbly priced, well balanced wines that show pure varietal character and ripe fruit flavours

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BUSINESS QUARTER |SUMMER 12

EQUIPMENT

SUMMER 12

keeping robots in their place You can only automate so far when business is a spiritual home, writes Josh Sims There is an unexpected room in Breitling’s factory in Le Chaux de Fonds, the spiritual home of the Swiss watch industry. Rather than rows of watchmakers, silently putting together timepieces with tweezers, are fully automated machines, drilling, positioning, screwing, assembling. The craft with which the industry so prides itself seems to have gone AWOL. But Jean-Paul Girardin, the brand’s vice president, sees it another way. “When we can

company - one of the few remaining - is going through an overhaul. There are the flagship stores opening - New York last year, Paris this, London next, with another seven or so to follow, as well as some 20 new Breitling-only independent stores. There is the expansion to the manufacturing base, which means it is now in the position to double production from its current 150-200,000 pieces per annum, half of which are mechanical chronographs.

introduce technology, we do it,” he says. “We still need the watchmaker’s knowledge and a hand-made capacity to make the watches we do. But we’re also pragmatic in pursuit of efficiency. If sometimes having robots to do certain things is convenient, and the hands of the watchmaker can add nothing to the process, then we have it.”

It’s a suitably progressive attitude for Breitling right now. The family-owned independent

And, perhaps most strikingly, there was the launch this year of the Transocean Chronograph Unitime, with a new Caliber 5 movement that re-invents the world timer mechanism by equipping it with an adjustment system that, unlike so many similar watches, is actually dead easy to use.

But, perhaps just as strikingly, for a brand that has built itself on the very instrument-like, almost macho style and functionality of its

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watches - which sees its Chronomat of 1984 still its best-seller, and its famed Navitimer still the oldest mechanical chronograph in continuous production - the Unitimer is also rather dressy. “It’s the most classic, elegant watch we’ve done for a long time,” Girardin concedes. “But to go too much down that route would be to lose the ethos that Breitling is known for - even if that means losing sales.

The fact is that a functional chronograph, for instance, needs to be a certain size and have a certain look - and we’d rather stay true to that ethos than dilute it to sell more.”

The ethos has, after all, been long in the building, one that has made Breitling the serious aviator’s brand of choice. Leon Breitling opened a workshop specialising in chronographs - then more for industrial and scientific purposes - back in 1884, moving to Le Chaux de Fonds 120 years ago this year.

His son Gaston took over the family firm in 1914 and, a year later, introduced the first wristwatch chronograph. In 1923 Breitling created the first independent chronograph push-piece - the buttons separate to the crown and still a distinctive characteristic of any chronograph today. And in 1934, Gaston’s son Willy developed the second return-to-zero pushpiece, giving the wristwatch chronograph its definitive form. In 1969 it designed the first self-winding chronograph movement. Ten years later ernest Schneider, watch manufacturer and - surely no coincidence keen pilot, took over the brand from Willy.

All the same, the Unitime and several new designs in the pipeline perhaps point to Breitling’s continued step up the prestige ladder. In 1999 the company decided that all of its mechanical watches would, >>

EQUIPMENT

SUMMER 12

The fact is that a functional chronograph, for instance, needs to be a certain size and have a certain look and we’d rather stay true to that ethos than dilute it to sell more henceforth, be certified chronometers. This year saw the warranty extended from two to five years, “which is a very clear message about the increase in quality,” the vice president says. Crucially, Breitling is also making its own product. When in 2002 the Swatch Group/ETA contacted Breitling, among others, to say that it could no longer give guarantees on the delivery of movement

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

blanks - the basis for the mechanical parts within a watch - Girardin was quick to take the decision to develop their own movements.

“Fans had long asked why the leader in mechanical chronographs didn’t have its own movement, and the idea was in the air but we never really did anything seriously to address it,” he adds. “But we simply couldn’t be in a situation where we could be waiting to receive

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parts. It was an industrial rather than a brand strategy, for all that it has proven a big turning point for the company. It has allowed us to innovate and develop new products, rather than rely on suppliers. But you have to keep moving forward.”

Albeit at no breakneck pace. Developing two movements every three years is enough of a challenge, he says, without the growing industry expectation to produce one to show off every year; “and I don’t want us to set off to try to design the most complicated watch ever, because it’s another kind of business that likes to develop extremely complicated movements, for another kind of customer,” Girardin adds. “We want to finesse the idea of watches as instruments.”

Or, in other words, build on its reputation as a specialist. “After all, the watch industry is akin to the car industry now,” Girardin adds, “in that the latter originally offered just the Model T Ford - and in any colour as long as it was black - but is now increasingly segmented, with different brands specialising in different kinds of vehicle.”

That will mean that, while Girardin does not want to become a brand dependent on raiding the archives - for all that the Unitime and, another recent classy piece from the brand, the Super Ocean Heritage are precisely based on past successes - and while through the years it has proven it can be original - with the likes of the Chronospace, Airwolf and Emergency models, for instance - nor should anyone expect anything too radically bold from the brand.

“But that is a product of functionality really,” Girardin argues again, keeping true to the brand’s form-follows-function thinking. “For decades the industry has been talking about putting the latest technology on the wrist but it isn’t that easy - and it’s not clear yet what people are really ready to wear on their wrist anyway. The fact is that, while designers are open to ideas, and there is some need to look different and strong, you still need hands and dials and a system to tell the time in the most legible manner - and that, more than with many other brands, is what Breitling is about.

Yes, functionality is limiting in design terms.

But it also helps define the company. It’s what Breitling is all about.” n

FASHION

SUMMER 12

in association with

68 SHADES OF WHITE - NOW THAT’S DETAIL

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Some say he’s a stylist rather than a designer. What cannot be denied, though, is that Ralph Lauren’s vision has transformed fashion, as Josh Sims reports

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FASHION

Back in 2000 a fashion designer decided to donate $13m to the Smithsonian’s American Museum of Natural History Institute in Washington in order to preserve the Star Spangled Banner - the original, hand sewn ‘old glory’. This may, at first, seem like a strange gesture, or a clever publicity stunt, until one learns that the designer was Ralph Lauren. It may seem stranger still given recent controversy over his company’s designs for the US Olympic team, which were found to have been made in China. But, a gaff though it may have been, that is more suggestive of his brand’s planet-wide reach today than a lack of patriotism.

Certainly, few of the global fashion players can lay claim to being so closely identified with their national culture than Lauren. He has built a multi-billion dollar empire - it has a market capitalisation of $13bn and he is worth some $5.8bn at the last count - by purveying essence of the American sartorial experience, one which has resolutely focused not on fashion but on clothes, not on trends but on moods. Its wide appeal is such that it is also one of the most extensively counterfeited designer brands, to the extent that Lauren’s company has opened manufacturing bases in many of the worst culprit countries in a bid to persuade governments to take action against these copyists.

Imitation may be the best kind of flattery perhaps and, in his instance at least, has not dented the popularity of his take on good dressing. Indeed, the Council of Fashion Designers of America have bestowed on him not just the Menswear Designer of the year award, but its ultimate gong, the Lifetime Achievement Award. That probably means a lot to Lauren, now 72, with his son David - who drives the company’s pioneering e-commerce and multi-media efforts groomed to take over. If not yet - earlier this year Ralph Lauren signed a new five year contract with what has been a public company now for 15 years, seeing him stay on as chairman and CEO until 2017. Small wonder when in spring the company also reported a 20% increase in profits and has seen in share price double in the last two years. “There are very few designers who have Ralph Lauren’s genius when it comes to envisioning and >>

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FASHION

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controlling every aspect and expression of their brand,” as US Vogue’s editor Anna Wintour has noted.

Indeed, despite his huge sales success, his career has been blighted with critics’ comments to the effect that Lauren is no designer, rather little more than a stylist.

Certainly Lauren may not have radicalised fashion with sweeping seasonal changes, but his singular vision has transformed the fashion industry and, more importantly, the way we consume clothes. Arguably Lauren’s was the first true lifestyle brand; not only in the sense of pioneering a hyper-real, WASPish and above all aspirational sensibility through grand, cinematic advertising campaigns (albeit one very real to his own ‘romantic cowboy meets wood-panelled aristo’ lifestyle) but one that took a way of life from the shirt on your back to the fabric on your sofa or the colour of your walls. If you need a testament to Lauren’s eye for detail, consider the 68 or so shades of white that his paint range offers. Living out of the limelight, elusive and reticent, he might seem as well-marketed as his goods: Lauren, after all, was born Ralph Lipschitz in the Bronx to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants, though it was his older brother who changed the family name.

Certainly, the Ralph Lauren style has shaped our conception of Americana as much Americana has shaped him. Even as a child, in part out of will, in part because he had two older brothers who would hand down clothing, Lauren developed a dislike of wearing anything that looked new. Even then, the young Lauren liked clothing that was embodied a sense of history, wearing vintage clothing before the idea of such was conceived.

With this conception of fashion firmly entrenched and a born self-stylist, it was perhaps inevitable that clothing would be his calling: his first job was packing gloves; he worked for Brooks Brothers; he became a salesman and then designer for a Boston tie manufacturer; and finally launched his own line of ties under the Polo label 45 years ago this year, against the grain of more boho trends at the time. The polo pony logo followed in 1972 and with it the ubiquitous polo shirt. Unlike the Italian fashion giants,

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FASHION

Lauren did not peddle sexiness so much as an old Hollywood glamour, one, indeed, that saw the brand cloth Robert Redford and cast in the movie of The Great Gatsby.

“I want my clothes to combine ruggedness, purity and non-fashion, a philosophy of living.

And the secret is to keep the character but do it with class,” Lauren has said. “I was always designing American clothes for American men and women.” And it is because Lauren has managed to stay close to his consumer despite the vast organisation he heads up, his wealth, his collection of 70 classic cars, the mansions in Manhattan and Long Beach, Bedford, the holiday home in Jamaica, the ranch in Colorado, the picture perfect family straight from central casting - that his brand has not only had longevity but arguably become iconic.

According to one account, whenever there is deadlock in design meetings, Lauren takes the debated fabric swatches or samples and walks down to the lobby to ask the opinion of the first passer-by. That may sound like PR flannel. Then again, this writer was once with a friend in one of Lauren’s New york stores when she was approached by a slight but handsome white-haired man and asked what she thought of the clothes. “They’re great, but too expensive,” she replied honestly, oblivious to her questioner’s identity. Ralph Lauren nodded sagely and thanked her for her time. n

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There are very few designers who have Ralph Lauren’s genius when it comes to envisioning and controlling every aspect and expression of their brand BUSINESS QUARTER |SUMMER 12

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Washday wishes

Pamela Petts has ambitious plans for leading a business group in the news further ahead. She tells Brian Nicholls how the UK’s failure to build its own washing machines, fridges and freezers may be reversed Remarkably and regrettably, you can’t buy a British-made washing machine. Pamela Petts, her entrepreneurial spirit rising, hopes to change this.

And the newsy firm of which she’s group managing director may be the one that does it. Ebac hit headlines recently when her father, John Elliott, put this family firm he founded into a community trust, instead of passing it down to group managing director Pamela and her sister Amanda Hird, the operations director. Unresentfully Pamela, who’s also finance director, insists in her lovely lilting Weardale accent that the family are unanimous over this.

And far from ambition being dampened, Pamela’s driving a new product launch this September – disclosing also that the firm, already Britain’s only one making water coolers, is well on with planning a British made washing machine.

Its renaissance at Newton Aycliffe in County Durham would be appropriate. Near Ebac’s factory on the same industrial estate, Tallent Automotive has a washing machine in reception. It’s a public reminder that, prior to car parts, it made bits for John Bloom’s 1960s washing machines, of which he sold 200,000 a year before becoming a bankrupt in 1969.

Pamela’s done the details, including a study of the existing makes’ design deficits. She’s convinced there’s a market for British made white-goods appliances. “It’s long been there,” she says. “Washing machine sales have hardly changed over 10 years. Some 3m will

be sold in the UK this year, every one foreign made, mostly in Italy. Italians have a fantastic reputation, fantastic products.

“But they’re not a low cost base manufacturer.

It costs £15 to ship a machine here – more than my projected labour cost. So it’s not that they can’t be made here. I’m confident. We’ve been to Italy, meeting people who equip the factories. It’s highly automated now.”

Pamela, 44, is as fired with enthusiasm to manufacture as her father has been, convinced

“Feedback was that an ‘Ebac’ fridge would sell as many alongside a Hotpoint or a Bosch because our name’s recognised through established products. People who know Ebac love us. Fridge technology, heat exchange, is what we do.”

Even for a company making £3m profit on annual turnover of £15m attracting capital investment can be a challenge now. Pamela estimates perhaps a £7m requirement to make the first washing machine. “Then,” she says,

I wouldn’t last in business more than two years if I spent more than I bring in, but that’s what we’re doing as a country of its importance of getting Britain back on its financial feet. “I wouldn’t last in business more than two years if I spent more than I bring in, but that’s what we’re doing as a country.

Making washing machines might have employed 1,000 people once. Maybe now, with automation and innovation, it will employ 500. That’s still 500 cost effective jobs here.”

She’s also eyeing 4m refrigerators and fridge freezers the UK imports yearly. “Again, I don’t think Britain makes any now. We could compete. Four years ago, we imported 1,000 fridges with Ebac badges on, to trial-sell through independent stores.

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“they get a lot cheaper as they come off the line. Existing factories tend to make about a million of them a year. That’s how the industry has moved.

“We couldn’t make them hands on like we make coolers and dehumidifiers. But, with automation, running costs don’t vary greatly whether you produce in China, Italy, Poland or Britain. A big cost of setting up, however, is plant, the development and bits you put in.

Variables – power, labour and things – are small in the equation. We’re confident we can make it work – and with improved designs.”

Meanwhile, the September launch nears: >>

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Clean up operation: Ebac’s plan to make washing machines in the UK could prove lucrative

If we get the products right and export them we could double this business, assuming the market’s there.

It’s not here yet in the UK but France has a massive market air source heat pumps, environmentally friendly technology. Whereas an application has been made for government funds to achieve “real growth” making washing machines, Ebac is producing the new pumps on existing resources. “It’s technology long used in our air coolers and dehumidifiers,” she explains.

“It wasn’t commercially viable while gas was cheap. Now gas prices may get closer to electricity. An air source heat pump becomes commercially viable if gas is even half electricity’s price.

“Air sourced pumps with 1kw of electricity can take heat from the air, and from 1kw of electricity you can get 2kw to 7kw of heat.

Installation tends to be dearer, and workings are different to gas combi boilers in heating homes. But they’re much cheaper to run than

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electric, and people who are dependent on oil have seen oil prices rise over the past two winters and have sometimes had difficulty even in getting deliveries.

“About 20% of homes are gas heated. For any home not, an air source heat pump is financially viable for home heating. It offers a payback of maybe four or five years on a system lasting perhaps 10.”

The Government’s Renewable Heating Incentive (RHI), which has already popularised solar panels, has air source heating as a consideration towards reducing carbon footprint, but this has been postponed several times. Pamela suggests RHI could even make air source heating viable vis a vis gas on current prices.

“We’ve made the technology much more efficient over 20 years. The market’s

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established in other European countries. For our market we have now a very good offer.”

Ebac’s a 50% exporter. Indeed, almost all of its 1m uniquely British water coolers made yearly go abroad. “They’re uncomplicated to operate and service. And like everything we make they’re reliable. Water coolers originated in the USA, where our main competition is - that and now the Far East. But the value we give cancels extra costs.”

A patented water trailer, advantageously hygienic, make them different. After making bottled coolers initially, Ebac for five years has made them for plumbed in, treated water. At one point bottled coolers seemed indomitable.

Now in the UK, with running costs differing little, the split is nearer 50/50.

Ebac opened 2012 by launching its plumbedin Fleet cooler, which is totally different to bottled coolers. It includes a counter-top version and, soon, a carbonated version, slightly dearer carbonated water being favoured by maybe 80% in Germany, against 5 to 10% here. While dehumidifier and cooler markets should hold up for years yet, washing machines, fridges and freezers could prove logical successors. “The air source heat pumps should give reasonable growth now,” Pamela says. “If we get the products right and export them we could double this business, assuming the market’s there.

“It’s not here yet in the UK. But France has a massive market, the French government having given lots of financial incentive already - part of the European drive on carbon emission, I assume. The market will come in the UK.” Ebac’s owning foundation took effect last October and was publicised last April.

Alternatives such as employee ownership and management buyouts were considered. But MBOs often change a business beyond recognition; the foundation guarantees Ebac as a local manufacturer. It came across in some media as rivalling the national lottery.

But Pamela stresses the priority is job creation for South Durham through manufacturing, not purely to fund community causes. “But employing 200 people supports the community. And contributing taxes and rates supports the community. We’ve always run like that.” Yet patronage is there, as Durham and Bishop Auckland cricket clubs, West

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Auckland football team and Durham’s Olympic rowing hopeful Nathaniel Reilly-O’Donnell know, despite cautionary financial advice sometimes offered.

The paramount passion to make things pleases 200 employees, all but two of whom go the extra mile or few with the firm’s latest relocation. Offered subsidised travel for a year, few availed of it. “Ebac isn’t about the Elliott family; it’s about the Ebac family,” Pamela declares. “Many staff have worked here years.

Amanda jokes that if you cut ‘em in half you’d find Ebac printed through!

“We do our own injection moulding, fabrication, electronics assembly, and some wiring and tagging. I can’t see Ebac ever a business importing things to sell. We love figuring how to make something work, then how to produce it. We’ve a design team, and a test house and workshop. We’ve a structured design process,” she adds.

Once her father, at 68, decided the future structure, there could be no selling the business for personal profit – “I don’t think this company’s ever paid a dividend” - and gains go towards upholding manufacturing.

Pamela recognised she couldn’t have stopped it. “I can’t say: ‘Let’s move to Poland and make another five quid’ you do the sums and think: ‘I’m giving that up’. Then I thought: ‘you know what, Pamela? If you want a £30m company to your name, go and do it.”

So she leads the business, reporting monthly to the four-member trust that includes John Elliott and two former employees. The fourth member will oversee the distribution of community benefit. “They’re all close to the business,” Pamela says. “But all decisions are with us running it daily.

“Sometimes they may think: ‘Maybe I wouldn’t have done it that way or whatever.’

But you have to assess all decisions made in considering whether the company is still in the right direction. The change is not huge, and it was right to do.”

She draws a director’s salary with bonuses coming through two schemes the employees share in, graduates or not. A shipments bonus earns everyone £40 each for every £1m of product shipped. So everyone could benefit by up to £500 a year. Then there’s a hangover from the now defunct state PRP scheme,

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once tax free and NI free. Ebac kept its principle in place. So annually, above a certain profit, a percentage is distributed, based on salary.

Pamela, like her father, agrees with the Government’s aim of innovation but feels too much focus is on invention, too little on

innovation within processes existing. “Only so many Dyson vacuum cleaners can happen in a decade, let alone a year,” she says. “We can bring back the manufacture of some things we were bloody good at and make a change.

But that needs government influence, and the Regional Growth Fund.” n

In defence of the 16-year-olds Pamela excels for a school leaver at 16, “not overqualified” yet determined to leave King James Grammar School (now academy) at Bishop Auckland.

She did stay on a year longer than her father did at nearby Toft Hill.

She says Ebac’s new apprenticeship scheme will take in 16-year-olds upwards. “I think the Government is wrong to have raised minimum age to 18. Some kids aren’t academic. yet we force them. Here, 16-year-olds are practically minded. Not all kids are good studiers. That doesn’t mean they’ve nothing to add or can’t sit and figure things out, then apply them.”

Pamela had no silver-spooned entry to the family’s factories, even though from 14 she’d cleaned there nightly. She aspired to be a nurse until, like Doc Martin, she realised the sight of blood made her pass out. Then she wanted to be a fashion designer. Her careers teacher said: “Learn to type instead, dear.” She did - on a yTS course. She got an office job – at the yTS. She also worked for a law firm briefly - “not for me”. However, she found responsibility with an overall-cleaning firm.

Then Ebac wanted a payroll clerk. “I’d enjoyed working with ledgers – the old Kalamazoo pre-computer system, ledger cards, columns of journal sheets and double entry book-keeping the old fashioned way. I wouldn’t type figures into a computer not knowing what happens then.”

Pamela still had to apply to Ebac. The firm has travelled a bit since 1973’s start-up at a West Auckland scrapyard, where Pamela and Amanda as kids had tried to repair an abandoned go-kart. Ebac’s shift two years ago to its present frondent park followed a period at Greenfields Industrial Estate, Bishop Auckland, and former Rediffusion premises at nearby St Helens, where it still makes industrial parts.

Admin changed too. It had struck the new payroll clerk time was wasted compiling wages on inaccurate information, and staff might find pay docked for non-attendance even if they’d been there but hadn’t clocked in, or had been off sick or on agreed holiday. “On my own belt I had the production managers in - a pretty scary bunch to a 20-year-old girl, let me tell you.”

After some teasing they co-operated in tightening the system. “That was probably the start of me saying: ‘...managed that. What else isn’t right?’” She later headed IT, her earlier knowledge of computers being her brother’s ZX Spectrum. But she successfully introduced Ebac’s first management system in resource planning, and an internal Unix-based e-mail system.

MD from 1997, she developed processes to lower production cycles; the group bucked a UK trend and matched overseas peers.

By 2003, two years before her father was named the North East’s 17th richest person on £70m, she was appointed group managing director. She has less time now for interests outside work and home – home being Bishop Auckland, where she and husband Richard, a developer, raise three sons, a seven-year-old and twins aged four.

But she and Amanda are training with two girls about to do the Great North Run. And she hopes to start a charity for families with sick children in the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle. She lost a daughter who’d lost a seven-week fight there to primary pulmonary hypertension, despite doctors’ best efforts.

“I want there to have been a purpose for Olivia,” Pamela says.

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VOICE OF EXPERIENCE BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

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Gather up Geoff Hodgson’s CV and you pick up three crammed pages, yet filled only with essentials. His extensive and varied career, thoroughly enjoyed to date, is an argosy of experience on which he sails also through critical duties at North East Access to Finance.

He and his board must, through this organisation known as NEA2F, ensure indirectly that small and medium-size businesses of the region are helped wherever possible to get funding to develop.

Hodgson, the 51-year-old non-executive chairman, knows well what SME bosses are going through; he faces it with personal business interests that run alongside his NEA2F work. Besides extraneous duties, such as helping to organise London’s Olympic Games, he has three personal “projects” currently. He and Keith Liddell of Greensfield Moor Developments, partnering the Duke of Northumberland, opened a 54 bedroom hotel on July 24, an Alnwick new build Greensfield is running.

Yet not even Hodgson’s acumen, and Liddell’s success in running Lindisfarne Inn at Beal and Bamburgh Castle Inn at Seahouses already, won a bank over. A start-up - and in leisure?

Instead the Duke, who wanted to sell the two and a half acres freehold, has funded the building. The site’s on long lease.

So a near £5m enterprise, the Hog’s Head Inn (a la Harry Potter) will provide 80 jobs – half of them full time – in a county starved of commercial development. Clearly, it needn’t be left to banks to decide if small ventures should create jobs.

Hodgson’s also working personally with another local entrepreneur, and advising a

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sound management on funding a spirits distillery for Lakeland. He’s also involved with Alan Brown, ex-Robson Brown media, and developer Mark Reed on a deal to open new serviced offices in Newcastle.

“Stuff keeps coming across the desk and I’ll pick it up and have a look at it,” Hodgson says. Don’t feel sorry. He loves opportunity. He fears NEA2F’s work at Baltic Place, Gateshead, may sound boring but stresses it’s vital, albeit often misunderstood.

NEA2F is the collecting house for historic legacies from venture capital funds once held by regional development agency One North East. It receives also legacy funds generated by the remarkable £125m Jeremie programme.

It decides through specific fund managing companies, how those monies should be deployed to the region’s advantage. It gives guidance also on issues surrounding SME access to finance.

“We’ve assisted various people in terms of workshops and conferences,” he explains.

Indeed NEA2F and Northumbria University have just held a gathering at the university to discuss accesses.

Organised by NEA2F’s chief operating officer Stephen Lightley, it was underpinned by research from the university’s Business School suggesting SME operators find it hard to decide which financial package is best for them - when lucky enough to have a choice.

Speakers and participants included Lucy Armstrong, who chairs Capital for Enterprise Ltd and is chief executive also of The Alchemists; Charlie Hoult (non-executive director of Hoults Yard, Newcastle); Professor Sharon Mavin, dean, Professor Jackie Harvey

Geoff Hodgson now runs the core body working to guide SMEs towards sound funding and guidance, and he does it with wide experience as an entrepreneur himself.

Brian Nicholls reports

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Keys to the lock: Geoff Hodgson’s role is to steer SMEs towards the support needed to thrive

and Jane Turner, associate dean, all of the business school; also Pat Dellow, area commercial director, HSBC; Colin Willis, managing director, Hotspur; Graham Thrower, non-executive director, and Stephen Lightley, for NEA2F. Keynote speaker was Herb Kim, chief executive of Codeworks.

Hodgson explains: “Nobody was really digging publicly into mood music for SMEs, on whether they’re able to lay hands on money from the various sources and, if so, how easily? We’re also commissioning research to explore the landscape for redeploying legacies.

Which historic funds have worked and why?

Which haven’t and why? And how best to use this money in the future?”

“People have opinions and many decisions in the past have been made on a basis of gut feel or he who shouts loudest rather than empirical evidence. The funds are still applicable but most have been fully invested and we’re taking in either the cash or the shares in which they’ve been invested.”

The £125m Finance for Business North East programme is a groundbreaking suite of seven investment funds made possible through European money. It’s being managed and co-ordinated until 2014 by North East Finance, under chief executive Andrew Mitchell, the aim being to support 850 businesses across all sectors by loans and equity investments.

Then these evergreen funds will be recycled, still to benefit North East SMEs. “We’re very lucky because only two other areas of the country have Jeremie Funds like ours, and I don’t think they’re as far along the path,” Hodgson says.

“Our time at NEA2F is about 18 months away.

We’ll be putting foundations down then for redeploying several tens of millions of pounds of legacy funds, to ensure SMEs’ further future access to alternative forms of finance. Other parts of the country where no receiving body had been created for the funds found the funds being handed back to the centre.”

Hodgson, like BQ, is surprised grumbles still circulate, claiming lack of advice on where to go for backing. NEA2F, running since 2009, has both a handbook in its third edition and a website signposting funding sources.

Its Elevator Pitch website, though, whereby aspiring entrepreneurs have 90 seconds on >>

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ENTREPRENEUR You Tube to have their pitch passed on, has not been extensively used. However, says Hodgson: “We now have the virtual Experience Bank, run by Alan Holmes - a sort of financial dating agency we facilitated but aren’t involved in.

“Up to 70 potential mentors, business angels and whoever gather quarterly to consider e-mailed applications for investments, mentors or whatever. The Elevator thing was a pipe dream. Anyone contacting us now is redirected to Alan.”

He stresses that, while One North East didn’t support directly either, it deserves immense credit – especially Malcolm Page and Peter Judge – for putting the funds in place and getting them up and running. Page is now executive director of commercial and corporate services at Sunderland Council. Judge, recently appointed MBE, is deciding what to do next, following the RDA’s state execution.

“One or two others claim credit but theirs was the foresight,” says Hodgson. “And, in getting the money out into the market place, North East Finance has done a fantastic job” NEA2F includes some banks when distributing information. But as Hodgson points out: “The average small business probably understands more already the workings of a bank than how a venture capital firm or a business angel works. So the focus is more on alternatives.”

Has he heard many stories about unhelpful banks? He laughs heartily, understandingly. “It was open season six or seven years ago when they were probably too lax in lending criteria.

They’ve now stopped for the reasons we know. We need to be somewhere between those two points.

“We’re hearing that if you’ve a good business plan, some security and a good management team, they’re open for lending. If you can’t tick all the boxes they’re not prepared to take a chance. But unless banks borrow and lend, they go out of business. There’s still reluctance to lend on property, though, and on certain sectors like leisure where certain banks took enormous pain in their lending.”

As a successful businessman, what advice would he give a start-up? “Make sure you’ve a robust plan. You need to have thought through what you’re going to do and how, the cost and likely outcome. Time and again

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Meeting of minds: A recent joint Northumbria University and NEA2F seminar people’s good ideas don’t make first base because they can’t explain these points. A good plan others can understand has never been more important. You may know what you want to do. But someone else must explain it to others on your behalf.

“It needn’t be 60 pages. The best plans are often on two sides of an A4 sheet with some numbers on a spread sheet behind. Days of just seeing your local bank manager whom you’ve known for 10 years and knowing from a handshake you’ve got a loan are gone.

Now he must go to a credit committee with your proposal. Make it easy for them.”

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Also, he suggests, in any SME’s relationships - with banks, venture capitalists, accountants, the tax man or whoever - don’t spring surprises. Keep key supporters and funders abreast not only of good news but bad. People are more amenable to early warnings. Mentors also can help others as they’ve helped him.

He’s particularly appreciative of Paul Walker and David Stonehouse, who both helped him sell Federation Brewery and start Northumbrian Taverns.

So is there room for sentiment in business?

Federation was the UK’s only co-operative brewery, one many loved but too few >>

ENTREPRENEUR patronised, and latterly it had brewed Newcastle Brown Ale, another cherished North East institution which Scottish and Newcastle Breweries decided in the end should be brewed not on Tyneside, but in Yorkshire.

Hodgson affirms Federation did lack customers at the end, and as for the brown ale: “I did my best to keep it here. If the recession hadn’t hit – you know, the rest is history. But there is room for sentiment because business is primarily between people. Taking decisions, you must ask: ‘If this was being done to me would I think it fair?’ “ If one thing didn’t come good for Geoff was it Atlantic Radio, an American consortium he was involved in which failed to gain a licence in the North East? He gives another hearty laugh. “I’ve had a couple of others,” he admits. “I went into partnership with a couple of guys and bought big houses in Gosforth and Jesmond to do up.

“Unfortunately, one partner died and we took a significant loss. A very unhelpful banking mob was involved in that.

“I never have a problem telling people where it’s gone wrong. Few I know who’ve been successful haven’t got a few disasters behind them. You learn more from the disasters than from successes.”

Geoff, his wife Jill and daughter (18, aspiring to Edinburgh University, reading German and entering advertising and PR) live at Gosforth.

To fit in commitments, Geoff starts his phone rounds walking the dog at 7.30am on Newcastle Town Moor. “I can have a conversation there without being disturbed great,” he says.

Being in the hospitality business, he may have to dine out one or two nights a week.

Weekends off, then? “It varies. But if I want to cut off for an afternoon’s fishing or a day’s shooting or whatever, I can juggle my diary and spend Saturday or Sunday locked in the study or out and about and that’s no problem.” Jill, formerly with Tyne-Tees Television, now has her own business, Bamburgh Cottage Holidays. “It’s been going three years - doing really well,” he says. “She did a plan and it’s worked.”

Didn’t she consult with him? “I did the deal, bought the property then left her to it. I want to stay married!” n

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Geoff Hodgson – the journey so far CURRENT NON-EXECUTIVE/ADVISORY ROLES 2012- Non-executive director/commissioner, Port of Blyth.

2012- Member, Nations and Regions Board London. North East representative on strategic body for all activity outside London.

2009- Advisor and mentor, Acritas, market research agency.

2009- Non-executive chairman, North East Access to Finance.

2009- Non-executive chairman, Blumilk/Litewhite, marketing, design, digital solutions.

2008- Non-executive chairman, Fresh Element. Started mentoring the caterer making losses on £400K turnover. Acquired the contract covering catering and events for the Baltic Arts Centre.

Disposed of existing outside catering business. Acquired on firm’s behalf part of a catering business in administration.The company now has a profitable £3m+ turnover.

2007- Non-executive director, Business and Enterprise North East.

PREVIOUS NON-EXECUTIVE EXPERIENCE 2007-12 North East England Tourism Advisory Board - chairman (previously vice). Helped establish the North East Tourism Alliance of tourism bodies after the RDA’s closure. Worked with RDA on tourism strategy and annual business plans. North East representative on national bodies.

2007-10 Newcastle Strategic Solutions – non-executive director of Newcastle Building Society subsidiary.

2007-10 Newcastle Building Society – credit committee member.

2006-07 Wear Inn - vice-chairman.

2007-10 Universal Building Society – non-executive director and lending chairman (before Newcastle BS merger in 2007).

2002-08 One NorthEast - non-executive director, audit committee chairman.

2006 Atlantic Radio Consortium – non-executive to US consortium that bid unsuccessfully for a North East radio licence.

2000-06 British Beer and Pubs Association – non-executive director and national council member.

EMPLOYMENT 2006- Managing director, chairman, Till Services. Firm set up following the sale of Northumbrian Taverns to develop sites retained from the sale as residential development. Till Services ran it for a year, selling its interest in 2007.

2004-06 Managing director, chairman, Northumbrian Taverns. An MBO of part of Federation Brewery (40 licensed outlets, later sold on).

1999-2004 Chief executive, Federation Brewery. Recruited to try to turn around a failing operation. Despite a strategic plan with limited finance, it was decided to attempt a sale of assets.

Bank dues were repaid, an £8m pension deficit filled and shareholders will ultimately receive over four times their investment. Deal value: £30m+ 1994-99 Sales and marketing director, Newcastle Breweries.

1991-93 Marketing roles, Coca-Cola Great Britain.

1990-91 Marketing and acquisitions director, Wessex Taverns.

1987-90 Sales and marketing roles, United Distillers (Diageo).

1983-87 Sales and marketing roles, Procter & Gamble.

OTHER INTERESTS Former committee member, The Parliamentary Beer Club.

Freeman of the City of London.

Past High Sheriff for Tyne and Wear 04.04.2011-04.04.2012.

Chair of Audit Committee and Chair of 5 subsidiary companies.

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IN ANOTHER LIFE

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Awash with enthusiasm

Stuart Anderson, managing director of Wilkinson Maintenance in Durham, is training to take part in the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race, at 40,000 miles, the longest race of its kind. He tells here why sailing might easily have become his full-time pursuit The sailing bug bit me in the early 1980s while working in Southampton. A friend sailed his own yacht there, which we crewed at weekends. We had a brilliant time, sailing

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around the Solent and the Isle of Wight, and there I picked up my passion for sailing.

We became quite good at crewing and worked towards - and gained - our RYA

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Competent Crew status, the benchmark for a crew’s seaworthiness. Our enthusiasm pushed us to take part in Cowes Week and other smaller regattas. We had the time of our lives.

It was the mid-1980s and both I and my wife, whom I had met while working in Southampton, were homesick for the North East, where we’re both originally from; Sue from South Shields, me from Sunderland. I threw myself into a North East business, which we bought as Wilkinson Builders in 1991. I had little time to think about my other passion then. But the bug never really left me.

I think Sue thought the same. She bought me a Skippers Ticket course. It felt like “kill or cure” for my latent sailing bug. It really reignited my passion for sailing. The desire to sail the southern oceans was something always at the back of my mind. I heard about the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race and thought: what a fantastic opportunity both as a personal challenge and to raise money for a very worthwhile cause, the Great North Air Ambulance.

Training for the Clipper is intense, but I’ve enjoyed a week of practical sailing and a theory week focusing on key things like navigation, ocean passage and sea survival, as well as a training weekend. The practical week, sailing the English Channel, was a true baptism of fire. Crewing a yacht in a force seven to nine gale for a week was a challenge, to say the least.

The race starts in August next year, and the Southern Ocean leg which starts in October, will take five weeks.

Time allowing, I’d also like to join the last leg from New York back to the UK finish. I can honestly say I’m looking forward to it, as it’s never stopped being my passion.

My mind sometimes wanders to the idea of sailing full-time or being a skipper as a job if, in another life, my business wasn’t also my driving passion. n Wilkinson Maintenance, a specialist in commerial property maintenance and refurbishment, was formed in 1970 as Wilkinson Builders. It became Wilkinson Maintenance in 2001 after the Andersons’ buyout in 1991. Today its client base spans from the Scottish Borders to the M25.

Hay & Kilner presents:

THE TWEETING MAVERICK (an employment seminar by way of role play)

AIM: How to avoid costly employment claims, legal fees, lost management time and loss of sleep.

Scene 1:

A director and lawyer meet to discuss how to address social networking boundaries and one particular employee who has already overstepped the mark.

Scene 2:

The director, upon a claim being made, is cross-examined in the Tribunal on all aspects of the dismissal of the tweeter and particularly, the mental process in reaching the decision.

Venue: Centre for Life, Newcastle Date: Thursday 20th September 2012 Time: 8:30am - 10:45am To reserve your free place at this seminar contact Jenny Simon.

Call: 0191 232 8345 Email: jenny.simon@hay-kilner.co.uk Visit: www.hay-kilner.co.uk to book a place online What clients have said about the Hay & Kilner employment team: Neil Dwyer is seen as “an expert who manages to convert complex legal information into understandable processes.”

Sarah Hall “understands our business and gives pragmatic advice outlining options and risks.”

Sarah Furness provides clients with “clarity and high-quality answers.” “...clued up and on the ball, Rodney Jones quickly reacts to our needs.”

PRINCE’S TRUST

SUMMER 12

Partnerships of value

By John Wall The Prince’s Trust Enterprise Programme is helping to introduce more of an entrepreneurial culture in some of the most disadvantaged areas in the North East.

Its programme aims to help young people by giving them support and funding to help start their own business.

It aims to address barriers to enterprise by working with young people to prepare and inform them about how to succeed in business, and to provide those who do start in business with mentoring support.

This will guide some of them on their journey to starting their own business.

For others, the programme will lead to other positive outcomes such as employment , training or education.

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

Partnerships with the business community are vital to the work of The Prince’s Trust, as they give young people access to skilled business people while raising vital funds to support the work of the youth charity.

The North East Leadership Group, launched earlier this year, has been particularly good at doing this.

The group aims to bring local business people and organisations together to raise money to help fund The Trust’s Enterprise Programme.

The group, comprising business people from across the region, is chaired by Nigel McMinn , managing director of Benfield Group.

The launch event alone raised more than £80,000 and included as keynote speaker Sir Charles Dunstone, chairman of The Prince’s Trust. Members include Benfield, Holland Foods, Meldrum Construction, Proton Power plc, Coutts, Dickinson Dees, Greggs and BQ magazine – and, thanks to their support, The Prince’s Trust is able to support hundreds of budding entrepreneurs in the region.

I am really proud to work with The Prince’s Trust raising funds across the North East. I work with others including John Marshall of Dickinson Dees, Nigel at Benfield, John Holland of JR Holland, Dave Meldrum of Meldrum Construction and David Simpson of Coutts to raise awareness and funds for the youth charity’s vital work.

John Holland and Dickinson Dees created an outstanding clay shoot at Lambton which raised more than £40,000 with actor Kevin Whately, star of TV shows Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and Lewis, a speaker. Nigel already has 50 teams entered for the Benfield golf day at Slaley Hall, which is hosted by Alan Shearer.

We have a Ladies Who Rock event for the first time at the Discovery Museum in October led

by Alison Morgan of Portland Group with fashion designer, Jeff Banks, attending.

In November Dave Meldrum and Balfour Beatty will host the Demolition Ball and in January we have our first Gala Business Dinner led by Ian Gilthorpe of Square One Law with John Inverdale as keynote speaker.

Next meeting of the Leadership Group will be at Nissan on September 26.

Sir Ian Gibson, non-executive chairman of Morrisons, will talk about manufacturing at Nissan, the world of publishing at Trinity and retail at Morrisons. If you would like to take part and help make a difference to disadvantaged young people across the region, please visit the website www.princes-trust.org.uk/about_the_trust/in_ your_region/north_east.

John Wall is chairman of the North East Development Committee of The Prince’s Trust.

It aims to address barriers to enterprise by working with young people to prepare and inform them about how to succeed in business

88

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MEDIA BRIEFS

SUMMER 12

Accenture, Microsoft, Barclays, Facebook, Vodafone, BT and Merck. The first 100 days, she says, can determine the outcome of an entire career.

>> All in the mind

The Scrutator >> Managing for a new era Leadership and management touch Jo Owen’s heartstrings. Managing’s tougher than before, he says. Managers once delivered through people they controlled; now they must do it through many they don’t, such as suppliers, customers and stakeholders outside the organisation.

His How To Manage covers 30 skills both essential and topical. And his second book out presently, How To Lead, acknowledges that leadership isn’t a natural asset. He advises how to navigate through hiring and firing, lead at any level, deal with awkward employees, coach to success, and inspire to win respect.

He’s rated as a Top 10 graduate recruiter in the UK, built a business in Japan, was a partner in Accenture and has supported more than 100 organisations good and bad, across three continents and a wide range of industries.

His books published by Pearson Prentice Hall cost £12.99 each.

>> First 100 days Niamh O’Keeffe hones leadership down a bit, advising in your First 100 Days (FT Prentice Hall £14.99) how to make maximum initial impact.

Her 18 years’ experience includes headhunting in the City.

Her 100 days of leadership amount to 100 minutes of reading, using a framework she created when founding her company, First 100, which has partnered the like of

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

you may prefer tips from a psychologist.

Sarah Rozenthuler’s book Life Changing Conversations (Duncan Baird Publishers £8.99) gives seven strategies to influence important conversations by talking about what matters.

Case studies include those of ordinary people who have transformed their lives by talking effectively in critical situations.

She’s had 10 years in the private and public sectors, and her global clients include the World Bank, BP and the BBC in Europe and the USA. She advises on how best to converse with superiors for maximum benefit, and how to keep conversation alive instead of just texting and tweeting. Person to person conversation gets you to places no e-mail can, she argues. Who’d disagree?

tells me: “The high point definitely – if you’ll pardon the pun – was the conquering of the 1,903ft Hartside Pass.”

The three day challenge successfully completed was one of a series of events publisher room501 is running and, thanks to the generosity of readers and all our other friends, almost £4,000 has already been raised.

The campaign is led by Variety (formerly the Variety Club) which asks companies for support over two years, enabling a bus to be built bit by bit. More information on: www.justgiving.com/room501bus

>> Our loss, nation’s gain How d’you think Philippa Tomson measures up as a new Sky News presenter?

Impressively, I’d say. To think this former winner of a Best Presenter award from the Royal Television Society got shoehorn treatment at ITV1’s North East and Border.

After a round of redundancies, she found herself largely reduced to weather duties.

Pip not only showed verve and innovation in this, but even regained her news involvement.

North East loss is nation’s gain.

>> Follow that lead

>> Paddlers and pedallers We don’t usually blab about the bravado of staff from BQ and its sibling publication luxe. But we thought you’d like to know a nine-strong team chose the most atrocious weekend of rain possible to cycle the 140 mile Coast to Coast route from Whitehaven to Tynemouth and help the children’s charity Variety brighten life for needy youngsters and community groups in the region.

Day 1 was the worst cycling weather ever seen by the intrepid cyclists’ support team at WatBike but despite three days of punctures and other mishaps the gallants won through.

A spokesman, still holding his backside,

90

In one of a series of Financial Times manuals, Guide To Business Development: How To Win Profitable Customers and Clients (Pearson Business £19.99) Ian Cooper expresses concern about the number of UK firms losing out by not dealing effectively with leads and enquiries.

“What point spending time, money, creative energy and manpower in generating leads and opportunities if you don’t convert as many of them as possible to business at the most profitable levels?” he asks. Axiomatic, that.

In his 30 years’ experience he’s helped more than 800 organisations. Some of his 14 books published have been sold in more than 35 countries, and in more than a dozen languages. Here he offers more than 500 easily followed tips.

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BIT OF A CHAT

with Frank Tock >> Big is creepily beautiful I’ve just driven without pre-tuition a 25 ton, six-wheel articulated Volvo dumper. That may not turn you on. For me, it’s a schoolboy ambition achieved. Amok, so to speak, 55 metres down in Marsden Quarry at Whitburn, I had misgivings at one point trundling up a 60º incline of loose aggregate that it could be the end of a beautiful dream.

But no, we reached the top without mishap, I reassured that Richard Rutherford sat behind, poised to pounce on controls if things did go wrong. Richard, from Hexham, has been instructing in heavy construction and demolition vehicles for 13 years. He never turns a hair when one visiting novice after another climbs into the cab to test their skill on days when Owen Pugh Group opens its quarry and facilities to key stakeholders.

He’s equally sanguine when trainees of the group, for which he also works, clamber aboard. Group chairman John Dickson, present chairman also of the Civil Engineering Contractors’ Association (North East), is stressing the sector’s need to infuse an ageing workforce with young entrants, ready for an eventual recovery in infrastructure work.

“Only by engaging young people early can our industry attract talent and enthusiasm and build a skilled workforce of the future,” he tells me. Indeed, his group recently linked with the Institution of Civil Engineers and Northern Counties Builders’ Federation to raise young people’s awareness.

Their Discovery Day for 14 and 15-year-olds made headway. Pat Gibson, who teaches at St Hild’s Church of England School, Hartlepool

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

SUMMER 12

(specialising in engineering) said afterwards: “Getting out of the classroom and into a working environment with a chance to speak to industry professionals sparked their enthusiasm and creativity.”

And George Hodgson, who teaches at the Joseph Swan Academy in Gateshead, said: “Pupils have said to me they didn’t realise such a wide range of jobs was available to them.”

I’d say some mums and dads, too, ought to give this much modernised industry some thought for any of their offspring seeking job guidance. John Dickson’s colleague at CECA (NE), regional director Douglas Kell, stresses at every public opportunity all that the industry can offer thinkers and doers alike.

It’s a helpful industry too, I learned from Liam Corbett. Liam, 20, studied at a Teesside training centre after leaving Manor College of Technology in home town Hartlepool. But the centre couldn’t find him a sponsor or an employer. C&A Pumps at Bowburn learned of his disappointment and gave him work experience. Now Liam has been named the North East’s Most Promising Apprentice in civil engineering and construction by CECA (NE).

Alan Roberts at C&A Pumps tells me: “We soon decided we should employ him. We estimate that in ability and maturity he’s 12 to 18 months ahead of other apprentices for the same time scale.”

>> For your attentions’s Don’t call it the fruiterer’s apostrophe any more.

Call it the corner shop’s apostrophe after the outlet of that ilk in Whitley Bay whose window advertises Groceries’s.

>> Two’s company Having worked hard for it, Newbiggin and Stockton deserve to be “Portas pilots”, getting state funding and expert advice from retail guru Mary Portas to help regenerate their high streets. Their own suggestions put

them among 12 successful bids out of 371 places competing.

It’s less than a £100,000 average each gets – enough, though, to encourage.

Newbiggin deserves to be aloft; didn’t John Braine get the aptly named idea for his novel Room at the Top there?

Seriously, though, it’s in an area of Northumberland that has been really badly hit by recession and its aftermath, and was low waged even before.

A favourite seaside resort among Victorians, its fortunes plunged in 1967 with the closure of its coalmine, and 36% of its shop premises have been vacant recently.

But also recently its beach has received TLC and its transformed maritime centre is a little gem of a visitors’ attraction.

Champions of the recovering resort, like Crystal Hinds the maritime manager and Norma Thompson, who chairs Newbiggin Traders’ Association, now want improved transport to make it easier for shoppers to visit the high street from outlying areas.

Stockton had been highlighted nationally as one of the worst places in the country for empty shops.

But the local council already has a £20m revival plan under way for its famous high street and surrounds over the next five years.

I just hope neither Portas pilot suffers the fate of Morpeth – shopping improved beyond recognition only to have its town centre torn apart by prolonged, trade-damaging roadworks. Incidentally, why did the Government need a marketing consultant like Mary Queen of Shops to rescue our high streets? Couldn’t those on the front line, local chambers of trade, give the answers?

Or wouldn’t they have been listened to?

Is the Government too proud to draw on local expertise? Or is it because chambers are often associated with carping rather than creating?

Either way, other towns with troubled high streets unlucky enough not to feature in a second batch of 15 pilots to be announced shortly should watch and learn.

ONLINE: Read more observations from Business Quarter’s backroom boy Frank Tock on our new website. www.bq-magazine.co.uk

92

A part-time MBA for full-time people Don’t just take our word for it. Here are some full time managers who have completed our part-time MBA: “Newcastle Business School has a wonderful group of tutors who support and encourage improvement in a professional but friendly manner. I couldn’t have asked for a better team. The knowledge and skills I have learnt have changed my career prospects and increased my opportunities and horizons.”

“The locality of the School really appealed to me.

Having previously undertaken full-time, part-time and correspondence study, I valued the ability to speak to lecturers face to face and interact with other students.”

Yvonne Gale

Jeff Stephenson “Everything I learned during the programme was geared towards my job and proved particularly useful not only for my personal development but for solving the problems and issues I was facing at work.”

Trevor Milner

“My favourite thing about studying at Newcastle Business School and Northumbria University has to be the modern facilities and IT support.

I can access key information from home and work which means I can work more flexibly”.

Elaine Fletcher

“Other colleagues had completed the programme and spoke highly of it.... the MBA has improved all aspects of my performance at work.”

Jane Gibson

Talk to us about how our MBA can help you. Call 0191 227 4507 or email nb.mba@northumbria.ac.uk and arrange your personal appointment.

www.newcastlebusinessschool.co.uk

520

EVENTS

SUMMER 12

BQ’s business events diary gives you lots of time to forward plan. If you wish to add your event to the list send it to b.g.nicholls@btinternet.com.

The diary is updated daily online at www.nebusinessguide.co.uk.

AUGUST

27 CBI North East annual dinner, speaker Lord Green and Neil Bentley (6.30pm).

27 NECC Meets, Catterick Leisure, Catterick Garrison (2pm). www.necc.co.uk/events

1 NECC Meets at Newcastle, Sleeperz Hotel (5.30pm). www.necc.co.uk/events 2 No Obligation Apprenticeship Event, Rolls-Royce North East Training Centre, Newcastle (1pm). 0191 2565 311. Routledge-k@michellbearings.co.uk 2 North Tyneside Business Forum workshop series: Presenting Business Powerfully, Quadrant East, Cobalt, (7.30am). Sandra 0191 643 6000, business.forum@northtyneside.gov.uk 7 Let’s Network, NECC, Cafe Neja, Barnard Castle (5.30pm). www.necc.co.uk/events 9 Bank of England Quarterly Inflation Report and Briefing, Wynyard Rooms, Wynyard Park Hall, Billingham (8am) TessValleyIRB@bankofengland.co.uk 9 Bank of England Quarterly Inflation Report and Briefing, Theatre Royal, Newcastle (noon). NewcastleIRB@bankofengland.co.uk

27 Colleagues on Tap co-working day, Shepherds Dene, Riding Mill (9am). www.spaceontap.com/co-working/#events 27 NOF Offshore Renewables Working Lunch with Technip, Holiday Inn, Seaton Burn (10.30am). 0191 384 6464, k.leng@nofenergy.co.uk

OCTOBER

2 NECC Business Barometer Briefing, Middlesbrough 4 NOF Energy Networking Lunch with DeepOcean Group, Hardwick Hall Hotel, Sedgefield (10.30am). 0191 384 6464. k.leng@nofenergy.co.uk

16 Let’s Network, NECC, Whickham FC premises (8am). www.necc.co.uk/events

11 NOF Networking Lunch with Darchem, Hardwick Hall Hotel, Sedgefield (10.30am).

0191 384 6464. k.leng@nofenergy.co.uk

17 NOF Energy, international oil and gas visit: Malaysia. 0191 384 6464. k.leng@nofenergy.co.uk

16 CIM North East, brand series, Professor Roy Sandbach, Newcastle (6pm)

30 Three Chambers Networking, NECC, De Vere Slaley Hall Hotel (11am). www.necc.co.uk/events

18 NSCA Annual Dinner, tbf, Civic Centre Newcastle. Marie Rice 0191 300 0532 or Marie.Rice@icaew.com

SEPTEMBER

18 NECC Human Resources Seminar, legislation update, NECC Durham (9.15am). www.necc.co.uk/events

3 CIM Durham/Tees Valley, Social Meeting, Sunderland (5pm) 4 The Entrepreneurs’ Forum open breakfast on IT Security with James Lyne, director of technology strategy at Sophos and Steve Cox, chief technology officer at TSG. Hilton Hotel, Gateshead (8.30am). 0191 500 7780.

18 Durham/Tees Valley CIM, Blending Networking and LinkedIn, Will Kintish, County Durham (6pm)

5 NSCA, Finance Act 2012, Ramside Hall Hotel, Durham (9.30am). Marie Rice 0191 300 0532 or Marie.Rice@icaew.com

25 NOF Energy, Energi Coast networking dinner and annual supplier day, St James’s, Newcastle. 0191 384 6464. k.leng@nofenergy.co.uk

6 NECC Policy Update, Newcastle

25 NECC Tyneside and Northumberland Annual Dinner, Newcastle Civic Centre (6.30pm). www.necc.co.uk/events

11 Workshop, Simple Changes, Big Benefits, Teesside University campus (9.30am). info@juliewood.net, 07412 653 552.

12 Search Engine Optimisation Explained, Service Network and Media Online Marketing joint event, Muckle LLP, Newcastle (8.30am). 0191 244 4031, events@service-network.co.uk 12 NOF Energy, Networking Lunch: Hardwick Hall Hotel, Sedgefield. 0191 384 6464. k.leng@nofenergy.co.uk 12 CBI North East Regional Council meeting (10am) 13 South Tyneside Business Awards, South Shields Foreshore (6.30pm). 0191 519 7222 13 Redundancy, NECC human resources seminar, NECC Durham (9.15am). www.necc.co.uk/events 13 CIM North East, brand series, Gary Hutchinson and John Hays, Sunderland (6pm) 13 Investors in People, Preparing your Assessments, Durham (1.15pm). iip@i-dg.co.uk, 0844 406 8008 17 NOF Energy, Oil and Gas Visit to Malaysia. 0191 384 6464, business@nofenergy.co.uk 18 IoD North East, The Role of the Sales and Marketing Director, Ward Hadaway, Newcastle (7.30am). 0191 213 1289

24 South Tyneside Manufacturing Forum, The Supply Network, Bede’s World, Jarrow (noon). 0191 427 2324

25 Durham/Tees Valley CIM, Service Ability, the Key to Competitive Advantage, Kevin Robson, County Durham (6pm) 31 NSCA, Tax Update Autumn, Ramside Hall Hotel, Durham (9.20am).

Marie Rice 0191 300 0532 or Marie.Rice@icaew.com

NOVEMBER

1 NECC Annual Dinner, tbf 6 CIM North East, Intellectual Property, David Hopkins, Sunderland (6pm) 29 North Tyneside Business Forum workshop series: Access to a Diagnostic Tool, Quadrant East, Cobalt, (7.30am). Sandra 0191 643 6000, business.forum@northtyneside.gov.uk please check with contacts beforehand that arrangements have not changed. Events organisers are also asked to notify us at the above e-mail address of any changes or cancellations as soon as they are known.

KEY:

19 South Tyneside Manufacturing Forum, Business Improvement, Bede’s World, Jarrow (noon). 0191 427 2324 20 Nepic Annual Pharmaceutical Event, Sunderland University 20 Durham/Tees Valley CIM, Driving Sales, Stockton 20 Introduction to Investors in People, Gateshead (9am). iip@d-g.co.uk, 0844 406 8008

acas: Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service, CiM: Chartered Institute of Marketing, CECa (nE): Civil Engineering Contractors Association (North-East), HMrC: Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, iCaEW: Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, iCE: Institution of Civil Engineers, ioD: Institute of Directors, nEa2F: North East Access to Finance, nECC: North-East Chamber of Commerce, nSCa: Northern Society of Chartered Accountants, FSB: Federation of Small Business, Tba: to be arranged, Tbc: to be confirmed, Tbf: to be finalised.

21 NECC Teesside Annual Dinner, Thistle Hotel, Middlesbrough (6.30) 27 EEF members’ briefing, Employment Law Updates, EEF House, Gateshead (9.30am) 0845 293 9850 27 Jackson’s Law Firm Employment Law Update, Wynyard Rooms, Wynyard (8.30am). callen@jacksons-law.com

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

The diary is updated daily online at www.bq-magazine.co.uk

94

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