Profile: Paul Schofield

PLAYING golf or lying on a beach do not interest Paul Schofield.

He has spent the last 40 years building up industrial products manufacturer Union Industries, based in Hunslet, Leeds, together with his wife Isobel, its managing director.

But at 75, chairman Mr Schofield is certainly not looking to sever his ties with the business.

“People expect you to retire and all that sort of thing but really I love being involved in what we do,” he said.

He talks passionately about his joy at seeing the success of staff within the company, some of whom have been with the business for many years.

“They came as young kids, some of them without any training and without an awful lot of hope, and it’s a delight to see how they’ve developed, particularly their skills, and to see how they’ve nurtured, brought up families and done well.”

And Mr Schofield is keen to continue this theme of investing in people with a plan to convert the business to an employee ownership model, taking effect from spring next year. The couple are the current owners.

The pair had considered selling the company, receiving “ a great amount of interest”, but they were concerned the business might be traded on several years later. “Then we found out and came upon employee ownership. It means we sell our company to our employees, they continue in the company, develop it and hopefully it goes on into the future”, explained Mr Schofield.

Though he is stepping down from his role as chairman, Mr Schofield will become a trustee of the employee benefit trust, while Mrs Schofield will take up the reins as chairman. Union Industries is recruiting for a managing director.

Mr Schofield said: “Our idea is to give everybody a number of shares, then everyone starts from a level playing field, then they can move on from there, each year a certain number of shares will be made available and then they can invest in their company for their wellbeing and their future.”

Union Industries was formed in 1972 by Mr Schofield as a tarpaulin manufacturing and repair company operating out of a shed in Hunslet. Within a year, Mr Schofield had acquired 200-year-old York business, Ralph Ellerker, which had served the needs of the rural community since 1795 as cover makers, saddlers and rope and twine merchants. Former model Mrs Schofield, who was the original ‘Doreen’ in the Soreen Malt Loaf adverts, joined her husband in 1973.

In 1977 she swapped running Ellerkers for a new project, streamlining the manufacturing processes of canvas vehicle sheets. Ellerkers was run along traditional lines until 1991 when its activities were absorbed into Union Industries’ newly-enlarged and refurbished factories in Leeds.

As managing director, Mrs Schofield has led the evolution of the company’s products from tarpaulin to PVC fabrics, which led to the creation of the Matadoor range of high speed roller doors and the subsequent addition of the Eiger high speed door for freezers, and other products such as PVC aircraft hangar curtains and mobile decontamination units.

Today, the business employs around 70 people and has an annual turnover of £5.5m. Its client base includes big name supermarkets such as Asda, Morrisons and Tesco, as well as 2 Sisters Food Group, Wincanton and McCain.

“Whatever I’ve done could not have been done without her (Isobel) fundamentally”, said Mr Schofield, who started the business after a decade in a discount retailing firm.

After finishing school, Mr Schofield recalls having walked up and down Hunslet Road in Leeds as a teenager knocking on doors trying to find a job. “I was trying to find a job not really knowing what I wanted to do, except work”, he said.

“My father wanted me to be a dentist, and I’d be pretty useless at that, I went in the army, then I came out, then I worked for a corn merchant.”

After beginning as a personal assistant in a discount retailing business, he became director and was sent all over the UK, opening new branches and helping to turn around poorly performing ones.

He later became director of a company making tarpaulins, before setting up on his own. “One day you were in a suit, all smartly dressed, driving a nice car. The next day you were in your jeans, muck, and you were collecting wagon sheets and repairing them”, he recalled.

He added: “That was a great time to start a business, believe it or not, it was the time we had three-day week, we had strikes, we had no oil, no power, and it was the worst of times, it was the best of times, because all you had was opportunity, if you were prepared to work, and we worked night and day.”

But he said: “We realised early on that wagon sheets and tarpaulins were fine but really you were competing with the world and his dog.

“We came up with the idea, going back to the period in the 70s when we had an energy crisis, that if we lifted the tarpaulin up and put it on a wire it then became a heat retention curtain.”

The enterprise expanded from there into a diverse array of areas.

Mr Schofield said the business built a reputation as a “bespoke company”. “We realised that added value was the key thing and to do that you need to bring skill and also you need to be able to solve your customers’ problems.

“If I can solve a problem you’ve got as a customer, then the chances are you will come back to us because we were so helpful.”

Today, Union Industries sells its products all over the world, and is currently targeting markets such as the Middle East and Turkey. “Turkey is a pretty smart country in terms of what it produces, it is very sophisticated in terms of what it produces and there are some very good multinational companies based there so that is a very interesting country. I’d also like to see us develop our involvement in North America.”

Union Industries, said Mr Schofield, has just had its best year in terms of sales and profits, but his dream is that the business becomes a much bigger player.

“If there is a wish it is that 50 years from now, and I accept that nothing is forever, but it would be nice if 50 years from now this is a really big company and it’s gone on from how we started in our small way in a shed to become a meaningful UK major company, that’s my dream.”

Factfile: Paul Schofield

Title: Chairman of Union Industries.

Born: Leeds.

Age: 75.

Education: Woodhouse Grove School.

First job: Working at a wholesale company in Leeds Market.

Favourite holiday destination: France.

Car driven: Aston Martin.

Favourite genre of music: Classical.

Most proud of: Being associated with this company and what it has achieved, what the people in the company have achieved, and the way in which my wife, Isobel, has worked with me side by side and has been instrumental in so much of its success.