Profile - Jamie Bentley: Family firm is learning how to clean up thanks to organic soap

FROM the snow in the Die Hard 2 film to a commemorative bar of soap featuring an image of US President Barack Obama, the products manufactured by Stephenson Group have turned up in some very strange places.

The Leeds-based manufacturer makes soap bases for the paper recycling, personal care, textile and tyre industries but requests for its expertise have been wide ranging.

In the late 1990s, the company acted a consultant to the Fight Club film and even gave soap to an artist in Japan who wanted to make furniture out of it for an exhibition.

"Our chemicals have found themselves in a few unusual situations," admitted chief executive Jamie Bentley. "Last year I was in the US for the inauguration for Obama. When I was coming back on the plane, I saw the front of the US Today newspaper and there was a bar of soap with a picture of him in it. I spoke to our distributor in the States about it and he said it was made from our soap base."

The 150-year-old company traces its routes back to Bradford in 1856 when it was founded to make soap for the textile industry.

When the industry moved away from West Yorkshire in the late 1960s, the company diversified into other areas of chemistry.

It wrote the technology to wash the ink out of newspaper in the 1970s when paper recycling was in its infancy and also developed a range of products for processing rubber for the tyre industry.

Mr Bentley, 38, joined the company about 15 years ago to develop the firm's personal care division but says it was never his plan to go into the family business.

He said: "As a child I spent summer holidays working on the night shift and putting soaps in sacks. It was a big introduction to the real world. My childhood was very much a part of the company but I never intended to join it and there was never any pressure on me to work at the company."

Mr Bentley grew up in Knaresborough, but attended Uppingham School, a boarding school in Rutland.

As a youngster he had dreams of designing aircraft interiors and although he got a place at Kingston Polytechnic to study product design, he changed his mind at the last minute and decided to study business and financial management instead at what is now London Metropolitan University.

After graduating, he worked abroad as a ski guide in the French Alps, a waterskiing instructor in Turkey and on a stud farm in Australia before returning home and becoming a marketing assistant at the Bradford-based chemicals distributor Ellis and Everard.

He worked his way up its management development programme and was then offered a job with German chemicals distributor Brenntag.

He said: "I spoke to my dad about it and he offered me the chance to join Stephenson Group instead, developing a personal care division.

"I decided to join the company and set about trying to sell raw materials to the personal care industry. It wasn't easy at all but it was fascinating because we're a relatively small company compared to the other people in this industry.

"We found that 95 per cent of the business went to the big guys but the advantage we've got is that we can move much faster than the big competitors."

He added: "The personal care business became one of the biggest parts of Stephenson Group and it was a natural progression for me to move towards running the company without having to take over something that was already established."

The company, which has a turnover of 18m, is the main UK supplier of bases to the US soap market, generating sales of $2m a year. It exports 80 per cent of what it produces.

The most expensive product it has made to date is a bar of soap to accompany Yves Saint Laurent's Baby Doll perfume, which retailed at 25/30. Mr Bentley said: "All the value is in the fact that it is Yves Saint Laurent because the ingredients are very similar to what is in other products."

Mr Bentley took over the running of the group four years ago, although his father has remained in the business as group chairman.

Since then he has established a completely new management team and each of the business divisions now has a general manager. He also separated the technical function from each division to enable more product development. In addition, he launched the Bentley Organic brand which manufactures and sells organic products, including hand and toy sanitisers, to the independent sector.

The group recently became the first company in the UK to have its organic hand sanitiser proven by the government's Veterinary Laboratories Agency to kill the swine flu virus.

It is also launching a new household cleaning range under the Bentley Organic banner after buying the Natural House brand.

The factory in Horsforth, Leeds, is the only soap-making plant in the world to have both the UK Soil Association Certification and the ISO 14001 Environmental Standard, validating its reputation as a manufacturer of completely organic products.

As a result, in the last few years the company has started to attract big names, such as Procter & Gamble to its list of customers.

Mr Bentley has also taken the business into the US organic market following an agreement to supply its products to the organic retailer Whole Foods.

"You stand back from it as a guy running a relatively small business in Leeds and it's an amazing achievement," he said.

But one of the biggest changes for the company was the closure of its Bradford site two years ago.

Mr Bentley said the recession has had an "enormous" impact on the company and as a result there has been a 20 per cent reduction in the 100-strong workforce in the last 18 months.

"The big impact on our bottom line came before the recession when the exchange rate was $2 to the pound," he said. "At that point we were struggling and exporting was difficult.

"We saw the car tyre industry literally stop. We went from supplying hundreds of thousands of pounds to nothing overnight, although it's starting to come back now because retailers have sold their stock.

"Apart from the benefits of the exchange rate changing more in our favour, the recession hit us very hard. It's been four or five months of fairly uncertain times for the business."

One of the main problems was the withdrawal of credit insurance due to difficulties in the newspaper industry, particularly in the US.

"We had to go to customers and renegotiate prices and terms to get the money in faster and perhaps reduce margin," he said.

However, Mr Bentley, a father of three, is optimistic about the future and hopes to grow the group through acquisitions of other speciality chemicals businesses once the upturn comes.

The company is also striving to develop new technology and venture into new areas. It is trying to license a technology in the US which Mr Bentley said will increase the filling speed of carbonated soft drinks by 20 per cent. "The result is that the drink stays fizzy for longer and it stops carbon dioxide escaping into the factory."

He added: "It's about using the technical skill we have to develop really good chemistry."

JAMIE BENTLEY

Title: Chief executive, Stephenson Group

Date of Birth: March 20, 1971

Education: Uppingham School in Rutland, then studied business and financial management at North London Polytechnic

First job: Marketing assistant at Ellis & Everard in Bradford

Car driven: Alpha Romeo Spider. Toyota Prius on order

Favourite film: Thomas Crown Affair

Last book read: The Game-changer by AG Lafley (former CEO of Procter & Gamble)

Favourite holiday destination: Filey.

Most proud of: My mother's achievement in coming through a brain tumour when I was a child.