Wolverhampton manufacturing firm Boughton engineers a recruitment drive
A Wolverhampton engineering firm is on the recruitment trail as it looks for new skilled workers to help deal with its growing order book.
Boughton Engineering – part of the family-owned Skan Group – makes hook loaders and skip loaders for client companies in the waste handling industry and has enjoyed steady growth over recent years.
With managing director Richard Skan at the helm, Boughton has become the leading UK supplier of waste handling equipment for a string of major companies.
The key to Boughton's success has been to make the equipment its clients want and need, and to ensure that equipment is totally reliable. That is why every single vehicle fitted with a hook loader or skip loader at Boughton do not leave the premises, on the Balliol Business Park, until they have been through extensive testing.
"If you are lifting 11 or 14 tonnes, there can't be any risk of the equipment failing," said the company's sales and marketing director, Steve Price.
With hundreds of units being assembled and dispatched every year, and business on the rise, Boughton has had to expand to a further secure site at nearby Featherstone and Richard Skan is looking for a new site that would bring the two together – no easy task at a time when industrial and warehousing space is at a premium in the West Midlands.
The Skan acquisition of Boughton in 2011 has secured the prospects of a company that has been in existence since 1897. The Oldbury division, originally acquired back in 2000, is based on the same site handling specialist bespoke engineering and military products while the company operates an advanced modern fabrication operation in North Devon.
Together Boughton and Oldbury currently employs 105 people – up from 60 just seven years ago – and growth of around 15 per cent a year has taken turnover to around £20 million. But the continuing need for engineering skills means the company is now looking for another 10 to 12 people.
"We have invested in new products,in our facilities and in our people," said Richard Skan. "We are a family-owned business and aim to employ people for their whole careers.
"Recruitment is very competitive for manufacturing at the moment, but waste and recycling is an industry that has always been with us, and always will be."
