Aycliffe Today Business Aycliffe Today Business issue 34 | Page 9

The magazine for Aycliffe Business Park | 9
/NEWS
RAW Digital Training managing director Joanna
Wake and the firm’s Talent Service manager
Scott Carney (right) with learners (left to right)
Oliver Hunt, Jordan Tobin, Niale Robinson and
Graeme Adcock at Durham Cathedral.
BUSINESS BRIEFS
FORMICA SALES BOOST
A manufacturer which has a base on
Aycliffe Business Park has reported an
increase in sales, which has enabled the
firm to almost lave its operating losses.
Formica – which makes laminate
products for the residential and
commercial sectors from its sites in
North Shields and Aycliffe – saw its
turnover grow from £64m to £77.5m for
the year ending June 2017.
100-plus army of potential workers
to bridge digital skills gap
B
usinesses can now tap into a pool of
tech apprentices, with a new talent
programme about to produce more than 100
potential new employees designed to bridge
a growing digital skills gap in the North-East.
RAW Digital Training has teamed up with
DurhamWorks to create a new Digital Talent
Service, taking unemployed 16-24-year-olds
from County Durham and giving them work-
ready IT skills.
More than 100 learners have already
accessed expert training from industry
leaders in the fields of games development,
cyber security, website creation, digital
marketing and search engine optimisation as
part of the programme.
Now many of them are ready to be placed
into firms looking to recruit digital staff, with
several success stories already.
And Newton Aycliffe businesses can
access the learners completely free, and
benefit from the new skills and talent in their
workforce.
The programme is being delivered by
Stockton-based RAW Digital Training, in
partnership with DurhamWorks, a County
Durham Youth Employment Initiative funded
by the European Social Fund, designed to
get 16-24-year-olds into employment through
training and apprenticeships.
RAW managing director Joanna Wake said:
“There’s a massive increase in jobs being
created in these sectors in the North-East –
they’re growing at twice the rate as any other
sector.
“At the moment we’re seeing a huge
scramble for high-level website developers.
This programme enables us to help
businesses fill their talent pipeline, by
bringing in people who will stay with the
company and be nurtured, and ultimately
bridge that gap.
“We’ve had an exceptional response to
the programme, but we’ve also seen a very
high retention rate, with the majority of
learners staying with it throughout the course
duration, which has been very pleasing.
“They’re working hard, they’re hungry to
change their career path and getting into
what will be good, well-paid jobs that will
boost the local economy.
“Now we already have more than 100
young people ready for apprenticeship or
entry-level jobs in digital, tech and IT.”
Scott Carney, RAW Digital’s Talent Service
manager who is overseeing the programme,
added: “We’ve s een some really strong
candidates, some of which we have placed
very quickly.
“They’re learning more about real roles
within businesses and we’ve already seen
candidates go into jobs in app design, web
development, gaming and social media.”
More about the RAW Digital Talent Service
can be found at www.rawdigital.training/
netalent
Double delight for Tekmar after Euro deal brace
N
ewton Aycliffe-based Tekmar Energy
is celebrating after winning two major
European deals.
Tekmar, a global leader in cable protection
systems (CPS) for offshore wind farms,
has been awarded contracts from Dutch
contracting company Van Oord to supply its
systems on two projects.
The Aycliffe firm will supply its market
leading CPS to protect the 35 inter-array
cables planned on the Deutsche Bucht in the
German Bight, located in the South-Eastern
area of the North Sea.
Tekmar has also won a contract on
the BorWin3, a 900MW North Sea grid
connection operation, which is part of the
Dutch-German transmission system operator
TenneT.
The firm’s CEO James Ritchie said: “These
contracts mark our 61st and 62nd named
projects working within offshore wind, taking
the total systems supplied to well over
6,000 protecting over 20 GW of electrical
infrastructure around the globe.”
From its two sites on Aycliffe Business
Park, and with more than 32 years’
experience, Tekmar is a market leader in the
design, manufacture and supply of subsea
cables, umbilicals and flexible protection
systems for the global subsea energy
market including oil and gas and offshore
renewables.
The company said its 21% revenue
boost showed the firm had experienced
good growth in the UK, even though the
market was “weak”.
While turnover increased substantially,
the company also managed to make
a major improvement to its operating
losses, which fell from £13.1m in 2016 to
£7.1m last year.
M5TEC’S PIPELINE DEAL
A trio of companies including Newton
Aycliffe-based M5tec have joined forces
to deliver a bespoke rig for the testing of
gas pipelines.
Aycliffe firm M5tec, ROSEN Group and
Renown Engineering – all members
of NOF Energy, a UK development
organisation and members’ group for the
energy sector – teamed up after being
introduced at Subsea North East, an
event organised by NOF Energy.
ROSEN engaged with the team at
M5tec with a design brief for a test rig,
which needed to simultaneously induce
a tensile, torsion and bending force to
a fitting connected to a variety of pipe
diameters.
AWARD FOR HITACHI
Hitachi Rail Europe’s Newton Aycliffe
factory has won regional recognition for
boosting employment and regeneration
in the area.
The £82m plant was named North-East
Project of the Year at the Royal Institution
of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Awards.
It was one of 45 of the region’s property
schemes to battle it out for the honour
which celebrates overall outstanding best
practice and an exemplary commitment
to adding value to the local area.
The project – delivered by Merchant
Place Developments, Shepherd
Construction, Finley Structures and Ryder
Architecture – has created more than
1,200 direct jobs and a further 8,000
within the supply chain.