Page 12 - HUB-4 Magazine Issue 77

Warwick Ward Focus
Building an equipment portfolio:
Ashley outlined the strategy, “From an early stage we decided to build our equipment portfolio and create a ‘one stop shop’ for all the industry sectors we represent. We only want to be associated with quality world renowned brands so with the CASE CE and TEREX ECOTEC brands well positioned and established, we then partnered with KEESTRACK to represent their crushing and screening equipment nationally. It is an incredibly exciting venture for us as the brand has enormous growth potential and there are lots of opportunities for us.
Where we are now:
Over the last six years the Warwick Ward expansion has been rapid, with 4 depots and one to be opened soon in the North- East, added to the recent opening of the new Centre of Excellence this year. The swift progress has included significant enhancements at board level with a new Operations Director and Financial Director appointed to work alongside current Sales Director Simon Causier.
Ashley, expanded, “We opened the new Harlow depot and then followed in Barnsley with the Centre of Excellence. It has been a sustainable ‘future proof’ investment in the infrastructure within the business to ensure we can deliver what we need to deliver.
“The new depot in the North-East is opening to back up the sales process for Case and Keestrack. We continually maintain our service presence in the market with numbers of support
staff increasing every year. We currently have 25 service engineers in the UK and that number will grow. There is a huge amount of investment in the business with everything been ploughed back in to take us to the next level.
“Recruitment remains a challenge, good people are always hard to find. However, we are extremely focused on generating the next generation from within. So, we have apprenticeship academy programmes that have been running 4-5 years in every part of the business, which is reaping the rewards by installing the values that we have into the next generation. We need to open the eyes of the young people of the UK to look at the fantastic opportunities that our industry sectors can offer.
“We are very proud where we have come from and of where we are now – a £60+ million business employing 120 people.”
Investment in people:
Investment in people is a huge part of the Warwick Ward strategy as Matthew Godhard who is Operations Director explained.
“It is all about the future and it is one of the reasons we have opened the new Centre of Excellence which is the next step in our evolution. We need to invest in people and this site enables us to deliver the product to the customer and also how the customer perceives us. The other element is being able to deliver the training aspect. Take for instance our head- office, we have been there numerous years and it is a great site, but we have never had a facility where we could develop structured training programmes.
“This new Centre of excellence allows us to train our current team and apprentices onsite, as well as the regular visits to the Case, Keestrack and Terex factories for continuous product training. Covid did change our approach to training, and we had to embrace on-line training. The improvement we saw in the quality and engagement of on-line training I believe was quite significant in how we got the message across - this definitely did help! Along with this on-line and factory training, now, with our depots and this centre, we have the right training mix to deliver the future.
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www.hub-4.com Nov/December 22 - Issue 77