6 | Aycliffe Today Business
THE BUSINESS END
Stewart
Watkins is retiring after 35 years with Business Durham
Business Durham managing director STEWART WATKINS is retiring in July this year. In a special feature, MARTIN WALKER talks to the Welshman about his 36 years in the region...
When Valley boy Stewart Watkins answered an advert in the Guardian newspaper 35 years ago, applying for a job more than 300 miles away from home, he didn’ t expect to fall in love with the place.
But when the 65-year-old calls an end to his time as Business Durham’ s managing director in July this year, the proud Welshman- and adopted North-Easterner- plans to enjoy his retirement in our beautiful county.
Stewart first joined the Durham County Council as assistant industrial development officer in 1978- to“ gain experience” before moving on to the next job.
“ But from day one I just loved every minute of it,” he says.“ It’ s a great part of the world.”
The council set up County Durham Development Company( CDDC) in the late 1980s, which later became what is now Business Durham.
And Stewart, originally from Ebbw Vale in the heart of industrial Wales, has witnessed an ever-changing business landscape during more than three decades in the region.
But he’ s proud of what Business Durham has brought to the region, and to Newton Aycliffe specifically, during a roller-coaster time.
“ The County has been transforming for the last 30 years that I’ ve been here, from the closure of the mines and the closure of the wagon works at Shildon and Consett Steelworks,” says Stewart.
“ To compensate we brought in many inward investment companies, with a lot of foreign companies coming into the area to create jobs, and Aycliffe benefited immensely from that early drive, with a lot of credit going to the old Aycliffe Development Corporation.
“ As the economy changed again in the 1990s, we were opened up to the global market, and because of that low-cost countries in Eastern Europe and China either brought cheaper products to market, or companies here decided they could make their products cheaper elsewhere, and many companies suffered from that.
“ We’ ve managed to change the economy from primary, extractive, heavy engineering end of the spectrum through to the manufacturing and light engineering markets.”
Aycliffe Business Park is a thriving industrial estate, and while Stewart doffs his hat in the direction of many long-established firms on the town, he insists Hitachi is making companies up their game.
He says:“ Hitachi chose Newton Aycliffe because they saw the advantages: the skilled and hard-working workforce, the locality and amenities, and I think it’ s a great accolade for Aycliffe and the County.
“ But what the Hitachi deal also does, is that it makes people sit up and say to themselves,‘ how can we supply or trade with Hitachi?’, and that means many have got to re-think their strategy and how they raise the bar to meet Hitachi’ s exacting standards.
“ Local companies are now gearing up for that, and it’ s what I call a catalytic event. In other words, something is going to happen that wouldn’ t otherwise have happened. Hitachi will create 730 jobs, and some of them will inadvertently come from local employers, purely because of the profile local people will want to go and work for them.
“ That means there’ ll be an employment gap among existing employers, but I actually think that gives us an opportunity for local education and training providers to upgrade the training facilities in the area.
“ In the long-term Hitachi will give us the impetus to create a larger pool of skilled labour for the entire area, and I think we needed that spark to make something a little different happen.”
Business Durham helped set up the new Aycliffe Business Park( ABP) group and provided a much-needed online presence in the form of www. aycliffebusinesspark. co. uk
Stewart played a key role, and he recalls:“ At the initial meetings, we all agreed that there were certain things that needed doing, and how the park as a whole could come together to address those issues, because the public sector was no longer going to be able to help wholesale, it needed private-sector input and dynamism to make certain things happen.