PEOPLE FILE
Page 68
Page 69
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HORTON/HARDING/ HARTFIELD
Geoff Horton has been promoted to national development manager of NCCS. He was previously development manager, concentrating on brewery distribution.
John Harding has become area general manager, responsible for all NCCS depots throughout northern England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the company's expansion into The Irish Republic.
Neville Hartfield has joined the Dunstable team as development manager.
• P&O EUROPEAN FERRIES MARTIN Richard Martin will become managing director of P&O European Ferries (Portsmouth), from mid-May. He has been with the company since 1960, most recently as general manager in Zeebrugge.
• BRS NORTHERN HAMILTON/ROE
Alex Hamilton has been promoted to manager of the Doncaster branch of BRS Northern. He joined NFC in 1973 and has been manager of the Barnsley branch since 1986.
Peter Roe has taken over as branch manager at Barnsley, leaving his previous position as manager of the company's Scunthorpe branch.
Hays subsidiary, Bucks Group, has appointed Nigel Fincham as its new sales and marketing director. Based at the head office in Draycott-in-the-Clay, Derbyshire, he is responsible for developing distribution services for both retailers and manufacturers.
Fincham joined Bucks from DHL Elan where he was national sales manager for two years and, prior to that, worked at TNT IPEC.
Geoff Hargreaves has been named parts manager of West Pennine Trucks, the Middleton-based Scania distributor serving the Greater Manchester area. He has more than 12 years' experience in CV parts supply.
• CASTROL (UK) HANCOCKS/PITCHFORD Derek Hancocks has been promoted from marketing director to managing director of Castro! (UK), handling sales, marketing, manufacturing and distribution for the company.
Based at Castrol's head office in Swindon, he has taken over from Peter Pitchford, who has become managing director of Bunnah-Castrol (UK), the holding company for lubricants, petroleum and car care products.
• BRS SOUTHERN WINKS
Stella Winks has been appointed trailer rental development manager of BRS Southem's Dunstable branch, having worked for nine years with the company. She is in charge of the rental operation of 80 trailers. Roy Preston has been promoted to group transport manager of British Fuels, after 29 years' service. In his new role, he administrates over 1,000 vehicles.
Irene Middlemiss has joined John Dee Transport's Ferryhill headquarters as the North East development manager.
David Little has become development manager of John Dee Yorkshire, managing business development in Yorkshire. Having been in transport more than 20 years, he was most recently at BRS Knottingley, and the Transport Development Group, York.
Lord Robert Napier is new general manager and director of the Port of Felixstowe International. He was previously port director of the Manchester Ship Canal Company and has been managing director of Cory Ship Towage and general manager of Elder Dempster Agencies (Nigeria).
Chris Parry has been promoted to sales director of south Wales international haulier, Cardiff International. He is responsible for the company's sales and marketing, promoting its services to all areas of western Europe.
He joined the company in October 1988, with more than 12 years' experience in the industry, working for Severnside Continental Freighters and Danzas UK.
Glynn Lawrence has been appointed sales manager of Scantruck at Colnbrook, the Scania truck distributor for the West, south-west London and surrounding counties.
Heading a team of four sales executives, he is responsible for both retail and fleet sales of new Scania trucks and developing the company's used truck sales operation.
Peter Bruton has become general manager of Henlys of Coventry, succeeding Walter Bradley, who has retired after 14 years.
• LEASING PRINCIPALS CONVERY
Leasing Principals' new business development director is Stuart Convery, who joins from Wincanton Contracts, where he was general sales manager. He previously worked with Avis Car Leasing.
• DATA EXPRESS KNIGHT
David Knight is the new Doncaster depot manager for Data Express, the overnight parcels service of Hays.
He has previously worked in publishing distribution and has also served with oil drilling companies.
IN The Government's Training Agency, the Department of Employment division responsible for training, has launched a major campaign to promote its Business Growth Training Scheme (BGT), following a trial period which has caused mixed reaction.
BGT comes in the wake of heavy criticism from employers of the Department's Employment Training programme as too inflexible and bureaucratic.
Smaller firms have shied away from the BGT's emphasis on developing a clear business strategy. Indeed, to get the 15,000 on offer to help with training costs, a firm has to state a clear strategy.
The Training Agency's view is that a clear strategy is vital even for the smallest business and believes that with a £55 million kitty BGT offers small firms with fewer than 500 employees cheap, professional advice on mapping out a profitable future as well as qualifying for the maximum £15,000 award.
The BGT's logic is that if the heart of the business is sound, then all else will follow easily and naturally; if it is not, no amount of unco-ordinated training courses will help.
An alternative to the Government scheme is the joint effort recently announced by the Road Haulage Association and the Road Transport Industry Training Board. This programme, tagged Transport Training Initiative (T11), aims to pool the resources of RHA district offices and RTITB group training associations in an effort to bring small hauliers into training.
The initiative is open to all RHA and Freight Transport Association members and hopes to show all operators, through an intensive advertising campaign, that training is available and central to future success.
The Government's training plan is imaginative according to its supporters, and unrealistic according to its critics. But whatever it is, not enough is being spent, says the independent Employment Institute. It proposes a doubling of annual expenditure on training to £3 billion, to bring the UK closer to Sweden, which spends about £13,000 per trainee place each year in its national scheme.