Northwood is Telford is celebrating 50 years with investments in Telford.

Northwood is celebrating its 50th year by investing £750,000 in a new office

Transcript

00:00So we're here at Northwood Telford and Mark Fecker, you're one of the directors here sir?

00:04I am, I am. So very much welcome, this is the grand opening of our new office

00:09in our Telford Centre which has got our DC and our operations in here and this is a new spanking

00:18new headquarters for all of the office staff and it's our UK headquarters. And it marks 50 years

00:28of the company? Correct, 50 years. Fantastic. 50 years, my father founded the company and started

00:33it 50 years ago and we have developed and progressed that company and we are a family

00:40owned manufacturing business based in the UK. So it's the world of, I mean people might go

00:46Northwood, not too sure I've heard of them, but you can bet you've used some of their products

00:49can't you? What's kind of the big bulk of your work? So if you think about the product, if you

00:54go into a restaurant and you see a blue towel, that would be our blue centre feed. If you go

01:00into one of the football clubs, even the local football club here, you'd see that our dispenser

01:04systems under the North Jordan Rafael system are there. If you fly from an airport or you go to a

01:11hotel or a bank and you use their bathrooms you'll probably see our products there. Fantastic. And we

01:18also supply into the retail stores as well, so if you go to the main supermarket you're probably

01:23using some of our facial tissue. So what was your dad's first step on the ladder then?

01:28Was he down London when he took his first business step in Northwood? That's a really

01:32good question, that's a great question. So my dad started a business which became importing

01:38of products, of the raw materials into the UK and then in 2008 we made the first acquisition

01:47of our first businesses within the UK. So you manufacture here on site in Telford

01:53and how long have you been in Telford here now roughly? Oh we've been here for over 10 years.

01:59We acquired a business that was based in Telford originally and we decided that we

02:05like it so much here we were going to make this our corporate headquarters and build from here.

02:08So we like hearing nice things said about where we live, what is it about Telford that works

02:14for you? Is it all about that central location? I mean central location's great, we have a

02:18distribution company here which our trucks, our yellow trucks, you'll see them all over the country

02:22driving up and down, dropping them from south to north, east and west, delivering to our customer

02:28on a customer basis. We like it because it's got a good workforce, a great work ethic of people

02:33that work here and we like the idea that it's kind of a, we're a family-owned business and it's kind

02:39of that nice family feeling to the whole area. And this investment that we're kind of officially

02:44unveiling today, what's that surmounted to money wise roughly? So we've spent many millions of

02:50pounds investing in our site here and if you come into our factories and one of the open

02:56days that we'll run, people come and look at the factories and machines there. We employ

03:01over a thousand people in the UK and we have converting lines, paper machines and it's a

03:08continual investment program that we're on in order to upskill people and to improve our

03:16operational efficiency for our production. Well we wish you all the best on this 50th anniversary

03:21year and on behalf of Shropshire and the people here, thank you for investing in our area sir.

03:26Thank you for coming to see us. Great to have a new home, welcome everybody and shall we cut it now?