8 | Aycliffe Today Business
Stiller Warehousing and Distribution’s
General Manager Brian Simpson (left)
with Ian Donal from food packaging
company Coveris Rigid UK.
STILLER CELEBRATES 60
YEARS WITH £15M DEAL
Family-run Aycliffe firm Stiller
Warehousing and Distribution
celebrated its 60th anniversary
with a landmark £15m deal.
Martin Walker reports...
I recall sitting in the Stiller Warehouse
and Distribution offices two years ago. Paul
Stiller spoke so passionately and with pride
about how this company was started by his
German father 60 years ago.
Since then, there have been ups and
downs and despite a brutal recession, when
Stiller had to slim down operations, it has
come out of it fighting fit.
A year ago, we reported how Stiller’s
turnover had jumped back up to £10.5m.
And in 2014, its 60th year, Stiller spent
a total of £1m on a range of new vehicles,
including state-of-the-art longer semi trailers
(LSTs), while it has also invested £3m in
its site on Aycliffe Business Park in the last
two years, taking total recent investment to
£4.5m.
New staff have joined the company
and Stiller also boasts a proud record of
employing young people.
Stiller’s young workers make up a
total of 21 members of staff aged 25 or
under, representing just under a fifth of its
115-strong workforce.
And at the end of the company’s 60th
birthday celebrations came the news that it
had successfully tendered for a £3m-a-year,
five-year contract which will increase annual
turnover to up to £13m in 2015.
Gunter Stiller, Paul’s father and former
German Prisoner of War who started the
company in 1954 by trading a herd of pigs for
his first truck, would be proud to see how his
family business has grown.
Stiller hopes to create at least 10 new
posts after striking its latest deal - a five-year
contract which involves managing Coveris
Rigid UK’s newly-purchased Drum Park, on
Drum Industrial Estate in C