Bringing Aycliffe Business Park Together | 13
Maintenance Trainer John Graham
with an Apprentice and one of
Gestamp Tallent’s state-of-the-art
robots in the Tallent Academy.
“You won’t find a more
vocal supporter of
Apprenticeships than me,
and I think we’re leading
the way when it comes
to training our young
engineers. "
A seminar room has been included in Gestamp
Tallent’s new facility.
Gestamp Tallent Apprentices are shown the ropes.
guises around the site. But as much as the
company has evolved over the years, so has
the training centre and we’ve had to move
around a few times.
“We were lucky in that the company
identified Plant 6, and three quarters
of the building was just going to be left
undeveloped and boarded up. But then they
saw the potential of moving the training
centre over there.
“Peter called me one morning last April
and asked me to pop over. He said he had a
proposal for me. He showed me the building,
which was a completely derelict, and asked
me about moving our training centre there
and creating the Tallent Academy.
“I said ‘absolutely!’. From my point of
view, it was the best option available
“Since then a lot of work and investment
has gone into developing the centre to get it
to the stage it is today. The landscaping has
been tidied up and the frontage is looking a
lot nicer.
“And the training centre, from being
derelict at the end of April, has completely
changed.
“It is now fully furnished and kitted out
with state-of-the-art equipment including
training robots and LED TVs for presentations
as well as IT suites and boardrooms for
meetings.
“Ultimately we can open up the courses
to other businesses and the aim is it will
become a self-financing centre of excellence
that isn’t a drain on resources.
”
David is passionate about Apprenticeships,
having served his time with the company
through neighbouring South West Durham
Training.
Gestamp Tallent takes on at least eight
new Apprentices every year - usually
four tool makers and four maintenance
Apprentices - but in recent years has taken
on as many as 16 a year. The firm currently
has 54 Apprentices on its books.
Gestamp Tallent also works closely with
Woodham Academy, running a successful
Apprentice Challenge competition, run
very much like the hit TV show Apprentice,
which involves the winner being offered an
Apprenticeship, and the company also takes
part in Woodham’s annual Apprenticeship
Awareness Programme working with year 9
students.
David adds: “We invest heavily in our
Apprentices and their programmes and all of
our Apprentices are expected to gain a HNC
qualification as a minimum.
”
But David feels more work can be done to
encourage more young people to take the
Apprenticeship route.
“A lot is being done to improve the image
of Apprenticeships within schools, but I’m
hard to please and I think more can be done,
”
he says.
“We need to recruit a high calibre of staff,
so we want to be able to recruit talented
people from an early age, before they decide
to go to college and university, so we want to
educate them from year 8 and 9.
“Apprentices can go on to have fantastic
careers. A large proportion of our senior
managers and engineers have completed
Apprenticeships with the company.
“As an example our Plant Manager in the
assembly areas