View From The Top
Richard Chadwick
Group Chairman
Q1 and Q2 for Airedale
Chemical and Airedale
Solutions collectively has
shown promise that we
can achieve our growth
objectives put in place at
the start of our 5 year plan.
For Airedale Chemical the
considerable scaling up of our
facilities and workforce the last 15
months, at an investment of over
£3m, is now complete. As we
predicted, Q1 & Q2 as a result has
seen record tonnage delivered on
new, high performing products like
Peracetic Acid as well as providing
us far greater diversity with new
additions like BAC 50, SLES 28,
Glycerine and a variety of
Surfactants all joining our growing
portfolio of more than 400 products.
With more reactors, storage and
vehicles than ever before, Daniel Fox
(Operations Director) and his
operations and transport teams have
been able to produce and deliver
over 6% more product volume than
at the same point in 2014, testament
to our continuous growth.
Our end of year target of £44m is, as
we see it, very much achievable and
if met would provide Airedale
Chemical with a 10% increase in
turnover from 2014. For 2015, Q1
has recorded an ‘on-target’ budget
which considering the vast
investments late last year and the
increase of the Cross Hills site by
nearly 50% is very positive. Q2 (to
date) sees us maintaining that trend
which in large has been achieved by
a record number of new business
conversions overseen by Chris
Chadwick (Sales Director) and his
developing Sales & Marketing teams.
Our Procurement Department
headed by Tony Howell continues to
provide us essential added value
through increased flexibility and
control of our supply chain, product
diversity and raw material costs
which has played a large part in the
successful integration of around 15
new lines so far for 2015.
Airedale Solutions, like Airedale
Chemical, push into 2015 fresh off
the back of major investment to the
relatively new Skipton facility. In
particular the move away from our
existing cylinder driven filling lines to
brand new fully automated servo
driven lines will sufficiently maximise
the businesses production capacity.
Craig Thomson (Managing Director)
and his staff have had a busy start to
the year growing key private label
accounts within 3 major blue chip
retailers and with accreditations like
BRC and AISE secured for 2015 we
are now beginning to see exciting
growth of the higher volume private
label products. Our brand glow®
continues its UK roll-out having
gained positive retail listings in the
likes of Poundland and with further
product development for the brand
planned for Q3/Q4 we will be aiming
for additional store listings before
2015 comes to a close.
We hope you enjoy reading this
edition of Chemistry Connected
and on behalf of my team and I we
look forward to continuing to work
with you over the course of 2015.
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