16/10/2003
Michael Wright on the shop floor with French trainees.
A Gateshead engineering company has become an unlikely multi-lingual business to steal a major march on competitors - all thanks to an unexpected knock on the door from a young Frenchman.
The MKW Engineering Group employs close to 200 across four subsidiaries at Stargate Industrial Estate, Ryton, and has interests in the defence, offshore, sub-sea, chemicals, medical equipment, renewable energy and general engineering sectors, as well as in specialist engineering maintenance services, precision machining and wind turbines.
While no more than five per cent of the group's £8 million turnover is directly export-related, Group Managing Director Michael Wright explains that, when all business relationships are taken into account, that figure rockets to about 60 per cent. And on-site competence in French and other languages has proved a real boon.
Now the group is being used as example of good practice by the Regional Language Network North-East, a joint initiative by ONE NorthEast and the Languages National Training Organisation, aimed at sharpening the focus of exporting businesses on language and cultural issues.
French is at the heart of MKW's customer-driven languages policy, thanks in part to the young man who knocked on the door a few years ago. He had been sent to England to find a job in engineering by Les Campagnons du Devoir, explained Michael Wright.
Les Campagnons is a training organisation, with some 500 years of French craft tradition behind it. MKW were particularly impressed by the young man's skills, and the quality of his training and now regularly host French trainees intent on improving their English at the Ryton site, while also sponsoring enthusiastic English trainees to attend Les Campagnons du Devoir.
"It's a steep learning curve for the lads we send: the first one didn't have any French, but he's picked it up now. The other two we've sent had French lessons first and the Prince's Trust helped fund an initial work experience visit," said Michael.
Besides four young French apprentices at Ryton, MKW is currently also hosting two mechanical engineering degree students on work experience, all of which contributes to a climate in which the importance of foreign languages is recognised.
For the last two years, the company has run French lessons and, with about eight staff signing up each year, that has helped raise the number of English employees now able to speak basic French to about a dozen.
That overall level of competence recently enabled MKW to help overcome a major language barrier encountered at a South Shields company recently acquired by a French concern. And MKW also sent its French speakers to a prospective contract in France, prompting the comment that it was the only English company to have done so.
Recently, the group has been taking a close look at its opportunities and identified the need for a Turkish speaker to help support a joint venture in wind turbines there, while significant interest from Italy in the same technology suggested the group would also benefit from in-house competence in Italian.
Subject to its success in pursuing other ventures, the future could also see speakers of Mandarin and other languages on the payroll at MKW.
Michael Wright explains: "We have to go abroad for specialist items and it helps a lot to have people who speak the language. We've got people who are fluent in Italian and Turkish, which is an increasingly important market for us."
And Rahmon Nassor, Commercial Director, adds: "Having French speakers on the team levels the playing field when MKW are involved in contracts in France. If we had more French speakers we'd certainly be even better off."
Zélie Guérin, of the Regional Language Network, said: "MKW are an example of what companies across all sectors can achieve by putting languages right up their business agenda. We want to see the whole region improve its competitive edge by adopting policies like theirs.
Certainly, MKW prove that while it may be an increasingly small world, it remains a multi-lingual and multi-cultural one.