18 | Aycliffe Today Business
Aycliffe Today Business editor Martin Walker finds out why leading shower manufacturer Roman is a firm supporter of the highly-acclaimed Future Business Magnates competition...
TOMORROW’ S
Participants at this year’ s Future Business Magnates competition take a selfie during the grand final event at the Xcel Centre.
WORLD
It’ s one of Aycliffe Business Park’ s household names, one of Europe’ s top 1,000 fastest-growing companies, and earlier this year was recognised with the Queens Award for Enterprise for International Trade.
And as the accolades keep on coming, shower manufacturer Roman still ranks youth engagement and development as one of its biggest priorities.
The firm’ s managing director, David Osborne, took a hands-on involvement in this year’ s Future Business Magnates event, an annual competition organised by Business Durham which encourages local firms to buddy-up with schools and come up with innovative ideas for the future.
Roman’ s team won best presentation in 2015, and this year the firm’ s Barnard Castle team finished third overall.
It’ s an achievement – among many others – which Osborne is quite rightly proud of.
“ Future Business Magnates is brilliant, and I wish I did it when I was at school!” he said.“ It’ s great fun, the young people really enjoy it and seem to get a lot out of it.
“ We try to do a lot in the community and we take on new apprentices every year, so we’ re big believers in training and developing local young people.”
The Barnard Castle team toured Roman’ s factory on Aycliffe Business Park and held meetings with the firm’ s management before coming up with a housing solution for third world countries.
“ They toured our facility and we gave them some pointers, and they very quickly twigged on to a modular building being a key part,” said Osborne.
“ What they’ ve done is brilliant. I’ m really proud of them, they did a great job, and I’ d be very surprised if it doesn’ t end up on the market at some point soon!”
For Roman, Future Business Magnates clearly isn’ t just a tick in the corporate social responsibility box. It’ s something Osborne feels benefits his business, too.
“ The young people were involved in all areas of the business so it was also good for
Roman boss David Osborne with his Barnard Castle team, which finished third overall.
our staff to do something different and get involved,” he said.
“ Manufacturing isn’ t a dirty word, it’ s the backbone of the country, so the earlier you get young people engaged, the better. Professions are very good at getting people engaged early on and manufacturing doesn’ t seem to do it for them, but this is the only thing out there that does, which is fantastic.