In response to Leitz Tooling’s local recruitment and apprenticeship drive, capital investment in state of-the-art equipment, and their ongoing charity work, in February, MP for Harlow Robert Halfon visited the company’s Harlow-based UK head office to find out more.
Leitz Tooling UK is the UK’s largest supplier of tooling to the British woodworking industry with all their tools safety tested to BS EN 847 standards. A privately-owned German manufacturer with locations worldwide, the company has service and sales centres covering the whole of the UK and the Harlow head office is a centre of excellence for diamond tool servicing in the UK.
Talking with Robert Halfon MP, managing director Simon Liddell says: “As a global company, the decision to locate our UK head office in Harlow 26 years ago was based on its excellent transport links to the rest of the UK and into the Continent as well as the pool of skilled personnel on its doorstep. Our purpose built centre houses not just administration and sales but is our main tooling service facility, and we host seminars and training here most weeks for customers from all over the country.”
Mr Halfon congratulated sales manager Brian Maddox, and engineers supervisor Tony Kumm, two of Leitz’s intrepid team along with Dave McCann who completed the epic Three Peaks Challenge last year raising over £5000 for children’s charities.
Always looking to the next challenge, Brian Maddox is running the London Marathon on 24th April this year for Action Medical Research and Haven House Children’s Hospice is campaigning for as much support as he can muster: “The training hurts! I’m probably too old, too fat and surprisingly I’m not the athletic type, but I am fully committed. Every donation helps, not just the kids charities but my motivation too, and at 4am before a 12km training run I need all the help I can get!”
Every seminar held by Leitz, be it on tool optimisation and productivity or A+ energy rated timber window production, has a booking fee of £15 per person which is donated in full to the charities.
Mr Halfon said, “It is so wonderful to visit this Harlow-based company Leitz today. It is an outstanding company which employs many local Harlow residents. It is a manufacturer of high quality tooling and what is particularly good is they have actually employed more people over the last few months; another example of why jobs and businesses are coming back to our town. I congratulate everyone – the staff and the company as a whole – I am very proud that this business is in my town.”
Leitz has an open policy to recruitment across every level of the company, from technical sales and service representatives to apprentice engineers and office administrators. “We continue to grow and improve our capability, capacity, productivity and customer lead times,” said Simon Liddell. “Part of our succession planning includes local recruitment and building the skill set needed to satisfy the industry of tomorrow.”
Click here to sponsor Brian’s London Marathon for Action Medical Research.
