EuroWire January 2024

Corporate News

(from left) Andrew Du Plessis, Adam Shaw, Tom Mander and Mark Venables

Succession planning leads AWI towards record year

proved an overwhelming success. Alloy Wire International is in very safe hands and, importantly, has a management team in place that has new ideas and new innovations that will continue to facilitate our growth, whilst also staying true to our ‘employee-owned’ culture that has governed the last 77 years.” Tom Mander, managing director of AWI, added, “The first 11 months have gone better than expected and we’ve put some exciting plans in place, including a £500,000 investment drive in new machinery that will boost our capacity and ability to continue to deliver three week lead times on our range of 62 high performance alloys. Every member of our 33-strong team are owners of this business, and this translates into how ‘we do manufacturing differently’.” Alloy Wire International www.alloywire.com Acorn Support Ltd https://acornsupport.co.uk

and the culture this brings with it – will drive the ongoing success. Two years ago, the management team took the decision to look for the future owners from within, with long-term staff members Tom Mander, Adam Shaw and Andrew Du Plessis leading the successful MBO. A complex process was made easier by advice from Acorn Support, which provided an external sounding board for the decision-making and put in place psychometric testing to identify key personalities, emotional behaviour traits and ability to work in a team. “We knew we had some very talented individuals in the business, and it was always our ‘gut feeling’ that the next owners would come from within,” said Mr Venables. “The work we did with Acorn gave us a clear insight into future roles and the confidence that Tom, Adam and Andrew had the necessary skills, personalities and characters to make it work. This accelerated succession planning and led to the MBO, which has

A UK manufacturer of round, flat and profile wire is on course to celebrate a record year, less than twelve months on from a management buy-out (MBO) designed to protect the ‘unique values’ of the business. Alloy Wire International (AWI) has seen sales increase by £3mn since the deal was completed in 2023, taking turnover to £18mn with the prospect of breaking £20mn in 2024. Demand from customers in more than 63 countries was behind the initial boost, but chairman Mark Venables is sure that the firm’s commitment to extending the employee-ownership of the company –

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January 2024