Joanna brings a new perspective to a man’s world

But Joanna Robinson, the newly appointed managing director of long-established Yorkshire manufacturer Mansfield Pollard, says that women should be encouraged to take up such roles as they bring a different perspective to the table.

“This a very heavily male-dominated environment and as such everybody is following the same pathway really so I just bring a different view to things, a female perspective,” said Miss Robinson, who comes from a financial background.

“You have got to have a mix of perspectives I think and that’s what I bring.”

Just 10 per cent of the boards of Yorkshire’s largest 150 companies are women, according to a recent report released by accountancy firm BDO. Miss Robinson, who has a young family, said that it is her own determination which has helped her succeed in her career.

“I’m not pretending for one minute it’s easy, it’s not, it’s expensive, I have them in nursery, luckily I have my family who also help out but really I don’t have much time to myself.

“It’s my own determination pushing me forward to do what I want.”

Miss Robinson said her plan is to modernise the ventilation and air conditioning systems maker, which saw its annual turnover rise by 13 per cent to £12.9m in its financial year which ended in July. The company is investing in the renovation of its site in Bradford as well as new machinery and equipment.

Miss Robinson said: “My key goal for the next few years is firstly to modernise the company. We are a traditional, family-run business which has lots of merits so we do want to stay traditional with the values that come along with that but we need to modernise our processes, our approach... we’ve got an excellent foundation, an excellent platform to grow.”

Mansfield Pollard, which employs around 130 people, is also looking at bringing engraving capabilities in-house with the purchase of a specialist machine. It is also planning on automating its loading system.

“Our plan for the next three to five years is to try and increase turnover to around £18m, so I would imagine we would definitely need to take on quite a lot more staff and extend the site at some point,” added Miss Robinson.

She has been heading up the business since the start of the year, having replaced Alan Pollard as managing director. He is chairman of the business. Miss Robinson joined the firm as financial controller 13 years ago, working her way up the ranks to finance director.

Mansfield Pollard designs, makes and installs ventilation systems and products as well as acoustic solutions such as noise deadening equipment. In recent years, projects have taken an international dimension with installations in the Middle East, Russia, Australia and West Africa, whilst UK customers have included major supermarket groups, NHS hospitals and universities.

“It’s not been an easy couple of years with the market but we’ve managed to focus on our core areas and we are quite keen to look at product development to try and enhance what we do and make things more energy efficient because that’s the way the market is tending to go and what end users are demanding really.

“That has been our focus over the last couple of years,” said Miss Robinson.

She said that the firm’s work abroad is starting to reap awards.

“Dealing with the Far East and Dubai can be quite difficult to actually get in there but we’ve been working at it a few years and we are starting to have some measure of success now within that.

“That tends to be with our kitchen canopies range. We are heavily developing that at the moment to try and make them more energy efficient.”

Mansfield Pollard is looking at expanding into new countries such as Scandinavia and India.

The company, which has made some new additions to its team recently, underwent a rebranding exercise this summer including the launch of a new website.

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