Black Country Business Festival: Liberty highlights need for young engineers
The need to encourage new recruits into the world of manufacturing and engineering was the hot topic under discussion at one of the Black Country's leading employers.
Liberty Industries employs more than 1,000 people at around 20 sites across the Black Country and ran a careers event at its Oldbury factory yesterday as part of the Black Country Business Festival.
It is part of the fast-growing Liberty Group that has expanded to employ 12,000 people across 30 countries and generate turnover of US $3bn in just the last few years.
Founder and chairman Sanjeev Gupta is driving a range of initiatives across the business to encourage young people into industry, and has even been appointed by the Prince of Wales as an official ambassador for the Industrial Cadets programme designed to nurture manufacturing skills.
John Wood, director of group corporate services at Liberty Industries, played host to around 20 visitors at yesterday's festival event, giving them a briefing on the company and its work in recruitment, as well as letting them hear from one of Liberty's apprentices about her experiences before taking them on a tour of the Popes Lane facility, which is home to a number of tubing companies.
"We had people from some of the local colleges and training providers as well as companies looking to place young people in apprenticeships and they seemed to find it a useful experience," said Mr Wood.
"We are trying to show the manufacturing sector as it really is and the range of opportunities that are available to people, particularly as we continue to grow both in the UK and internationally.
"Here at Liberty we know we need to grow and nuture young talent more, because we are all facing a demographic time bomb in manufacturing and engineering, as our existing workforce ages without enough young people coming in to replace them.
It's why we have created the Liberty Talent Path and are working with primary and secondary schools locally. We are also putting a lot of investment into providing further training to our existing staff."
The factory tour included a number of companies based on the site that work with metal tubing, creating systems of major car manufacturers, aerospace companies and even the nuclear industry.
