Meet the retiring manufacturing boss who isn't calling time on the industry yet

After spending four decades in the manufacturing industry, Nick Garthwaite could be forgiven for sounding jaded about certain aspects of work.

Especially as the managing director of Bradford-based specialist hygiene chemical manufacturer, Christeyns, is set to retire and hand over the reins on January 1.

However, any notions of him slowing down are greatly misplaced. Mr Garthwaite is as upbeat as ever.

“It was always my plan to retire,” the 63-year-old says. “I intended to retire in June 2020 and I had asked the owners of the company if I could do so back in June of 2019.”

It just so happened that “something got in the way”. That something being a global pandemic.

The Bradford-based firm needed all the experience of the manufacturing veteran to enable it to restructure.

Mr Garthwaite’s journey into engineering started as a result of his father, who was a sales manager for gear manufacturer David Brown. He did chemistry, physics and maths with the intention of becoming a chemical engineer.

“As it happens, I became a mechanical engineer,” Mr Garthwaite said. “There’s an irony in the fact that late on in my career that I did end up in the chemical industry sector.”

He didn’t do as well at his A-levels as expected and didn’t go to university. “Perhaps I didn’t work as hard as I should have done,” he said.

But his father suggested he take a look at mechanical engineering and become an apprentice.

“I joined David Brown in April 1975 as a technician apprentice,” Mr Garthwaite added. “I thoroughly enjoyed the four years there learning all about mechanical engineering.”

In 1982, he went onto become a salesman before moving onto a mechanical transmission company in Bradford called Flender two years later.

He said: “I enjoyed being a mechanical engineer. I enjoyed the incredible variety of applications where transmission systems are used.

“It managed to get me into many places around the world during my career including some off-beat locations. It was a fascinating period of time.”

Over the past few months, during quiet moments Mr Garthwaite has been reflecting on his career.

Trips to far-flung places and even off-beat gold mines were “fascinating” experiences for the industry veteran.

“Some people would pay a lot to have a holiday like that,” Mr Garthwaite said. “All my working life I’ve enjoyed. Some times have been more challenging than others but on balance I have enjoyed it in every sense of the word. Work has become a hobby.”

While at Flender, Mr Garthwaite worked his way up from salesman to managing director. That business was acquired by German engineering giant Siemens in 2005.

Mr Garthwaite said: “Siemens is a fantastic company as we all know but perhaps it didn’t suit me in terms of being a part of this large organisation.

“So in 2010 I decided that once the integration of Flender into Siemens was done, I would look for other opportunities.”

He came across a job advert in The Sunday Telegraph for the role of managing director at Christeyns.

“The more I got into it the more I thought I really want this job and I’m really going to go out to win it, which I’m pleased to say I did and I joined Christeyns in August 2010,” he said.

When he came into the business, Christeyns was facing an age demographic dilemma. The new managing director realised that he needed to blood younger people into the organisation.

One of his greatest achievements at the helm of Christeyns has been developing people.

“With the greatest of respect to my predecessors,” Mr Garthwaite said, “we’ve got a group of people at all levels who have found their voice.”

He added: “I’m very proud of our apprenticeship programme. Back in 2010, when I joined we didn’t really have young people coming into the business. There was a tsunami of people heading into retirement.

“Creating that apprenticeship programme, we’ve started to address those issues. I’m pleased to say that the age demographic now looks much more sensible.”

This success would lead to Mr Garthwaite becoming a driving force behind Bradford Manufacturing Weeks, which has connected more than 12,000 schoolchildren with manufacturing businesses over the past three years.

Having successfully dealt with the demographic problem at Christeyns, Mr Garthwaite was frustrated that other firms were not doing the same.

He said: “When I was talking to other businesses in the city, I was hearing ‘we’d tried an apprentice but it didn’t work for us’ or ‘we don’t have work experience because we can’t get involved with all the health and safety issues’. I realised that we weren’t doing our businesses any good.

“I decided that we needed to create a model that opened up doors of manufacturers. There was also the issue of the perception of manufacturing that we had to bust as well.”

Under Mr Garthwaite, the UK business has seen turnover go from £21m in 2010 to over £60m this year.

He said: “I never call it a journey. I always call it an adventure. A journey is something that I go on to come into work in the morning. In this adventure over the last ten years we’ve brought about positive change and we’ve grown a business to a substantial level, which has laid great foundations for the future.”

Mr Garthwaite’s involvement with Bradford Manufacturing Weeks and his role as chairman of North & West Yorkshire Chamber means he won’t be hitting the golf course any time soon. He will also continue as a non-executive director at Christeyns.

Mr Garthwaite believes his replacement, Neil Jones, and the company has a great future.

“If they enjoy it half as much as I have done then they will have a fantastic time,” he says. “It’s a great company with great people.”

Curriculum vitae

Job title: Managing director

Date of birth: 08/01/1957

Education: Mechanical engineering at Huddersfield Polytechnic

First job: Salesman at a camera shop in Huddersfield

Favourite holiday destination: South of France

Favourite film: The Longest Day

Favourite song: It Must Be Love – the version by Madness.

Last book read: A very new book by an old colleague – Kim Boland called Making Waves.

Car driven: Jaguar F Pace

Most proud of: My whole family of course but from a work perspective, very proud of the apprentice programme we introduced in Christeyns some years ago.”

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James Mitchinson