Profile: Richard Shaw

Yorkshire’s rural manufacturing base is undergoing a revival. Richard Shaw met Deputy Business Editor Greg Wright.

AS bomber pilot Arthur Ellis headed back to base, his chances of survival seemed slim.

His plane was riddled with 100 bullet holes. One bullet had even destroyed the thermos bottle by his left thigh, but he managed, against phenomenal odds, to land safely.

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Today, he’s remembered as the entrepreneur who founded a Yorkshire company that protects oil rig workers in the most inhospitable places on earth.

His wartime exploits are worthy of a screenplay. According to his son Courtenay, the late Mr Ellis was a great innovator. As a teenager in the years before World War II, he built a gas-illuminated searchlight at the bottom of the garden which he used to ‘lock-in’ on RAF pilots training at night.

During the war, he flew 96 bombing missions in Wellingtons, Halifaxes and Stirlings.

In peacetime, he turned his hand to business. Mr Ellis took over a tiny plumbing company named Thorne & Allen, which was based in Castlegate, York.

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Today, the business still carries his name and is linked to some of the biggest building projects of modern times, including Heathrow’s Terminal Five and the Channel Tunnel rail link.

The firm’s current managing director, Richard Shaw, wants to honour Mr Ellis’s legacy, by expanding a manufacturing hub in a leafy Yorkshire village.

“We have succeeded because we constantly invest in new products,’’ he said.

The company has a simple mantra – “take the right decisions and the profit will take care of itself”.

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Today, Ellis’s products – known as cable cleats – keep a tight grip on giant electrical cables. If they didn’t, workers could be killed by short circuits, which make the cables writhe like eels.

“Short circuits happen very quickly, and with enormous force,’’ said Mr Shaw. “In places where people are close to cable installations, like an oil rig, there is risk to life.

“Although cable cleats play a part in safety, their major role is in preventing unplanned ‘downtime’ which can be catastrophically expensive on an oil rig and cause massive inconvenience in the event of a power cut for a utility company.

“In an oil rig, for example, it means you can re-set the circuit breaker and get the supply back in minutes instead of days.”

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As Mr Shaw points out, none of the company’s current growth would have been possible without its founder’s vision.

After a stint working on the roof of York Minster, where he taught himself how to pour lead to make decorative lead gargoyles, Mr Ellis decided that the future was plastic. So he moved into plastic injection moulding. In 1977 – 15 years after establishing the business – Mr Ellis decided that he needed more space.

He moved to Rillington, near Malton, where its scale remained modest. By the time Mr Ellis retired in 1987, it employed just seven staff and the turnover was £470,000.

The business was snapped up by Chris Calvert, the current chairman, and a number of investors, who moved an injection moulding business from Hertfordshire to Rillington.

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Today, it has a turnover of £7m and employs 53 staff. Mr Shaw is proud of the fact that 26 per cent of the staff live in Rillington, and most of the others are from surrounding towns and villages. Around £4m of its sales come from exports, and orders have poured in from places like Lusail City in Qatar and the Kashgan oil project in Kazakhstan.

The growth is being driven by the surge, if you’ll pardon the expression, in demand for underground electricity cables.

“You can’t build a lot of pylons over the top of a city – you have to go underground,’’ said Mr Shaw. “There is a trend towards this type of installation around the world. Almost five billion people will live in towns and cities by 2030. It is forecast that the total world population will be around 9.4 billion by 2060. As the poor become wealthier, they will consume more electricity.”

An engineer by training, Mr Shaw’s early career brought him into contact with protective equipment normally associated with medieval knights.

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He was previously the managing director of Manabo, a subsidiary of Thirsk-based Severfield-Rowen, which made chain mail gloves for butchers.

“They had invested a huge amount in the business and it was making substantial losses,’’ Mr Shaw recalled.

He turned the business around, and, three years later, it was sold to the American corporation Wells Lamont.

“It was an interesting interlude in my career,’’ said Mr Shaw. “I was sold with the business and they wanted me to look after their operations in the US. Relocation was a non-starter, so I joined Ellis Patents in 2001.”

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When he started, exports accounted for just £250,000 of turnover. From its base in Rillington, Ellis dispatches goods to customers scattered around the world.

“Brazil is a new market for us. We are working in the oil and gas markets there,’’ said Mr Shaw. “We are also working on the Gorgon liquid natural gas (LNG) project in Australia. The oil and gas markets are well covered and we are now looking at the utility market. Altogether, 99.8 per cent of our orders go out on time and in full. In some companies that figure is 50 per cent. It is very difficult being a salesman under those circumstances. It’s like filling a leaking bucket.”

In recent years, the company’s success has been monitored by the Duke of York, who popped in to see Mr Shaw and his team.

“We met Prince Andrew in Kazakhstan when we were exhibiting there,’’ said Mr Shaw. “He was brilliant – he came on to our stand without an entourage.”

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The company recently rebranded with the title ‘Ellis – Holding Power’, which is a neat summation of its role in major projects. Later this year, the company is holding a black tie dinner to mark its 50th anniversary at the Merchant Adventurers Hall in York.

“To make sure all our employees are dressed for the occasion, we are hiring dinner suits for all male staff or the partners of female staff,’’ said Mr Shaw.

Apart from the cable cleats, Ellis also produces 23 million clips for plumbing products a year.

But, as you walk through Rillington, it’s hard to believe that it’s home to a hive of industry. The second you step outside the factory, the loudest noise is birdsong. Manufacturers, it seems, don’t have to ship their operations to China.

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“In China, rates of pay at technical levels have risen to western rates,’’ said Mr Shaw. “There is growing pressure to bring manufacturing back to the UK. This is a robust business. We won’t sleep at night unless we are happy about the quality of our products.”

Without Arthur Ellis’s determination to get his stricken bomber home, a chapter in Yorkshire’s manufacturing history would never have been written.

Richard Shaw Factfile

Name: Richard Shaw

Title: Managing Director, Ellis Patents, which is based in Rillington, near Malton, North Yorkshire.

Date of birth: September 7, 1957

Education: Millfield School, Somerset and Leeds Poly-technic

First job: George Armitage & Sons, Brickmakers

Favourite song: To Ramona by Sinead Lohan

Car driven: I’m between cars at the moment. My last car was a Mini Cooper S.

Favourite film: The Commitments

Favourite holiday destination: Anywhere by the sea.

Thing you are most proud of: My children