COUNTY Durham building envelope specialist CA Group has bolstered its senior management with the help of business adviser UNW’s Strategic Talent team.
The company, one of only a handful of North-East companies held in an Employee Benefit Trust, enlisted chartered accountants UNW’s unique Strategic Talent department to help it bring in John Tweedlie as manufacturing director.
John Tweedlie brings with him 25 years’ manufacturing experience, in roles from production engineering to interim managing director. He has formerly been a board member of six companies, in five countries and most recently operations director at County Durham subsea equipment manufacturer Tekmar Energy.
CA Group managing director Des Webster said: “Where possible we look to promote from within but every now and then we identify a need to bring in some external experience to complement our existing skills set.
“We have just undergone a period of significant growth, growing turnover from £35m in 2013 to £53m in 2014. Now we have more than 200 staff, up from 165 people in 2013, so our requirements for a manufacturing director role became clear.
“As we are in a fairly unique position of being an Employee Benefit Trust, we need to work with people who share our values and vision and required someone who would come in and help us to continue to develop our people and business.
“UNW already understands what is unique about our business so the Strategic Talent team very quickly understood what we were trying to achieve, immediately introducing us to John, whose experience and like-minded approach make him an invaluable addition to the team.”
UNW head of Strategic Talent advisory services Peter Neal said: “Our deep knowledge of CA’s business, in particular its unique cultural aspects, made us well placed to help them in this latest component of their growth.
“What we were able to find was someone who was sufficiently professionally mature to be able to nurture the people who are already there and who will go on to find and develop his own successor.
“I had known John for a long time and knew he would be a good cultural fit for the business, sharing its values and vision. This insight and intuition, resulting from knowledge and expertise built up over many years of working closely with our regional businesses, is difficult to replicate.”
Newcastle-based UNW took on two former senior managers, with 25 years’ executive search experience between them, from global recruitment specialist Nigel Wright at the beginning of this year to lead the new Strategic Talent team, a unique move for an accountancy firm in the North-East professional services sector.
Peter Neal and Dave Bowman were brought in to establish the complementary advisory service, helping businesses, charities and social enterprises, who value expertise and flexibility above scale and process, to plan for and deliver growth.
For more information on Strategic Talent please call: (0191) 243-6269.
