Recent magazine features
Making connections
Sam Hawcroft talks to Mel Deakin, who has run her own sales and marking consultancy, Newdays, for more than a decade… It is about five minutes into my chat with Mel that I realise she is interviewing me. So it’s not surprising when she tells me that she “loves people” and has spent a life making connections in business, since the age of 17. We have one thing in common – in that both our careers...
Concrete goals
Composites Construction UK (CCUK) founder Jamie Dempster is targeting the Humber and M62 energy corridor with his expanded range of structural repair services. He talks to Sam Hawcroft. Sometimes in business you have to be in the right place at the right time. That was the case for Jamie Dempster, when a chance meeting led to him mingling with American tycoons at a five-star hotel conference in...
Get on the road – in style
Demand has never been higher for 8 Ball Camper Conversions’ bespoke vans as more of us seek Covid-safe staycations. Sam Hawcroft talks to the company’s co-founder, Colin Almond… As a little boy, Colin Almond always used to love taking machines apart and putting them back together. He has no real idea where this came from – his father was a school head teacher – but from an early age Colin had...
The beers that celebrate adventure
Brewing beer is a chemical process – there’s quite a bit of science behind the transformation of grain, water, yeast and hops into a delicious beverage. So a chemist launching his own brewery doesn’t seem all that much of an outlandish career switch. This is exactly what Mark Savile of Raven Hill Brewery, near Driffield, did – but becoming a full-time brewer wasn’t remotely what he’d envisaged...
From little acorns…
The scenario of Covid leaving the majority of businesses with a lot of catching up to do has a certain familiarity for Sarah Fenwick and Gareth Pennington. The couple went through the care system together during their teens. As care leavers, with support suddenly less readily available, they overcame a new set of challenges, learning skills and holding down jobs while also growing as people and...