Profile: Bill Westwater

ANYBODY visiting the Advanced Manufacturing Park is following in the footsteps of miners and police who clashed during one of the most notorious industrial disputes of the 20th century.

It’s peaceful now, but 30 years ago, the whole district was in turmoil.

On June 18, 1984, thousands of flying pickets were sent to Orgreave Coking Plant in South Yorkshire. They were faced by 4,600 police officers, many in riot gear, and 40 mounted officers. The cavalry charge which accompanied the ‘Battle of Orgreave’ still lingers in the public imagination.

The mines have vanished, and in their place, a park has been created for hi-tech engineering firms, and companies like Xeros, which wants to change the way we wash our clothes.

“It was the battleground back in the 1980s with the miners,” recalled Bill Westwater, the CEO of Xeros. “Now you can see a really flourishing centre there.”

As Richard Caborn, the former Sports Minister, noted recently, the AMP took root on a slag heap that was a symbol of conflict and decline.

A decade ago, the now defunct regional development agency Yorkshire Forward and UK Coal joined forces to create a joint venture to reclaim land on the former opencast colliery at Waverley, in Rotherham and develop the AMP. It is already home to world-class organisations such as Boeing and Rolls-Royce. Xeros is a small business based on the park that has high hopes.

Under Mr Westwater’s leadership, Xeros produces washing machines in which water is largely replaced by polymer beads. The company is commercialising technology developed at the University of Leeds School of Textiles, by a team led by textile chemist Professor Stephen Burkinshaw.

According to Mr Westwater, Xeros is manufacturing and marketing the first genuine innovation in laundering for 60 years, thanks to the polymer beads’ ability to gently agitate stains and soil from textile surfaces. Xeros says this system uses 70 per cent less water than conventional systems. It also saves energy.

Current Xeros partners include the national laundering provider Johnsons Services Group and premium dry cleaners Jeeves of Belgravia.

Last year, Xeros raised £10m funding to accelerate the roll-out of its commercial laundry cleaning system.

Invesco Perpetual managed funds invested £6m, with existing investors raising the balance of £4m.

They included Enterprise Ventures, IP Group, Entrepreneurs Fund, Finance Yorkshire, and Parkwalk Advisors.

Mr Westwater, who became CEO in 2008, just before the financial crisis, said: “It’s quite tricky spinning out technology from universities.

“We’re still learning in the UK and IP Group are pretty good at it.

“You are starting to get venture capitalists who understand a little bit better how to get the technology out of universities. And, most importantly, they continue to commercialise the technology using UK resources.

“We’ve got about 30 staff in Rotherham, we’ve also got a small office in the US which employs about five people, and we even have a couple of people in China as well, so we’re growing quite aggressively at the moment.

“We want to be the global leader in this whole new way of cleaning. We are proudly a Yorkshire company. I also hope that we can be proudly be part of renaissance as well for industries in Yorkshire.

“We’ve got pretty ambitious plans for further fundraising in 2014.”

Much of this expansion revolves around a desire to create a top class research and development centre in South Yorkshire; staffed by crack scientists from local universities.

“We have polymer scientists that we recruit out of Leeds University, Sheffield University, and Manchester University,” said Mr Westwater. “These are all good northern universities. These are high-value science jobs.

“We’ve been down at the AMP for about three and a half years now. We’re in (Deputy Prime Minister) Nick Clegg’s constituency and he’s taken a real interest in what we’re doing there.

“The more the AMP develops, the more you can create quite a flourishing eco-system around these R&D (research and development) centres at the AMP.”

Xeros’ dreams of growth are focused on the Chinese market, according to Mr Westwater.

He added: “In China we will be more reliant on working with Chinese partners. We’ve already launched in the commercial laundry sector, we’re selling large size washing machines.

“Although I have engineers at the AMP, who developed all the prototypes to get us to a pre-production machine, the actual production of that machine is happening in China with a big Chinese partner, so we’ve already got some synergy there.

“That Chinese partner is saying to us, ‘Look we don’t just want to manufacture machines for the export market, we would like to manufacture and distribute machines in China’.

“China will be an important strategic geography for us in the next few years.”

Mr Westwater’s 23-year career has already taken him to places as far flung as Guangzhou in China and Sydney, Australia. He’s held senior roles with household names such as Hutchison Whampoa, where he was vice president for marketing in Hong Kong and London, and Royal Dutch Shell, where he was global marketing manager.

You sense he feels at home in a nimble, ambitious firm like Xeros.

“I’ve always enjoyed trying to create a vision and gather people around that vision,” he said.

“This is what’s called a disruptive innovation. This technology could change the way people wash their clothes. That is a fascinating thing to try and create. There’s a bloody-mindedness about Yorkshire business people which I love, and you have to be bloody-minded if you’re trying to launch a disruptive technology, particularly if it’s about laundry.

“Basically, nothing’s changed in laundry for years, since the invention of the front-loaded washing machine.

“It might surprise you but there is a better way of doing something, despite the fact it’s been done in the same way for hundreds of years.

“I enjoy working with the people alongside me, because we do share that sense of mission.”

“We’re essentially pre-revenue as we only launched our first product (the commercial laundry machine) in June last year.

“However, we’ve raised £16m in private equity funding which gives you an idea how our investors view our potential.”

The future of cleaning could be shaped by polymer beads from South Yorkshire’s historic mining heartland.

Bill Westwater Factfile

Name: Bill Westwater

Title: Chief executive, Xeros

Date of birth: September 26, 1967

First job: Graduate trainee, Procter & Gamble

Education: Sherborne School and Oxford University

Last book read: Black Swan by Nassim Taleb

Favourite film: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Favourite holiday destination: Granada City, Spain

Car driven: Audi

Favourite song: Sundogs’ version of Stereophonics Dakota

What is the thing you are most proud of: Leading a company that helps make Yorkshire the envy of the South.