Northwood in Telford, you may not know the name but you will of used there products. They are celebrating 50 years with investments in Telford.
Northwood make toilet paper and associated products and in that world are a huge company, and in there 50th year they are still investing in Shropshire.
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NewsTranscript
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?