CEO of top award-winning company says best is yet to come
The Chief Executive of a Teesside company presented with the UK’s top industry award said “the best is yet to come.”
Paralloy received the King’s Award for International Trade from His Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant for North Yorkshire Johanna Ropner during a ceremony at its site on TeesAMP in Middlesbrough.
The company, which exports more than 90% of its specialist stainless steel products, has had a meteoric rise since coming under new ownership less than six years ago.
Revenues have increased £30m to £230m and the number of people employed in Middlesbrough, Billingham and Sheffield has risen from 220 to 560.
The Paralloy Group has also acquired a major business in France which, with its UK partner, added a further 560 staff to the payroll. Manufacturing space now totals nearly one million sq. ft.
CEO Robert McGowan said the growth had taken place despite a succession of crises which had disrupted the world’s economy: from Brexit through Covid, soaring inflation, the energy crisis and now United States’ tariffs.
“We should recognise that there are not many companies around who have been able to grow consistently year after year in this context,” he said, thanking his audience of employees for their role in the success.
Paralloy designs and produces specialist stainless steel products for a number of industries: petrochemical, aerospace, blue hydrogen, turbines and defence. The products are cast in one of three foundries in Billingham and finished, assembled and tested in Middlesbrough.
The company ranks number two in Europe in its sector and number three in the world, said Mr McGowan, but “the best is yet to come.”
Presenting the King’s Award after touring the TeesAMP site, the Lord-Lieutenant said: “Teesside is a fantastic place to have a business like this. To see things actually being built and made and manufactured is wonderful because we hear such dark things about UK industry and what we can achieve.”
And she told Paralloy’s staff: “What you guys have achieved here is truly outstanding. I hope today in particular makes you all feel incredibly proud because I feel incredibly proud and all I am doing is basking in your reflected glory.”
Earlier Mrs Ropner met 27-year-old Chanesse Martin, one of four women welders at Paralloy. “I think a lot of women feel intimidated. They feel that it’s a man’s world, but it’s not really like that and everybody’s welcomed me with open arms,” she said. Chanesse thinks women have particular advantages when it comes to welding: “I would say women can multitask a little bit better and maybe have a bit more patience.”
Twenty apprentices are training with the Paralloy Group. Last month one of them, welder Sophie Robins, was named Apprentice of the Year at The Welding Institute (TWI) Awards held at Middlesbrough’s football ground.