Glenmorangie plc, the Scotch Whisky group, has announced impressive interim figures, showing significant growth in its operations over the last year.
According to Paul Neep, chief executive of Glenmorangie, the company has seen major improvements in its production processes at its Broxburn headquarters in West Lothian, which he has attributed to the introduction of a dedicated training facility on site.
The learndirect scotland branded learning centre was established at Glenmorangie plc just 14 months ago to up-skill the 300 staff employed at the plant quickly and efficiently.
Already the business has experienced a marked increase in the quantities of whisky being produced – some 82,000 additional cases rolled off the bottling line this year as a result of improvements in staff efficiency and an additional 40 new staff have been recruited as operators to cope with the demand.
The company reported an eight percent increase in half-year profits on the back of growth of 10 percent in its flagship brand.
Morag Mathieson, training and development manager of Glenmorangie, said: “We have had to recruit an additional 40 people as operators within the manufacturing plant and all have gone though our introduction and training programme using our learndirect scotland resource.
“This dedicated training facility has enabled us to bring new employees up to speed twice as fast as it has taken in the past, allowing new starts to hit the ground running and therefore producing better all round results for the company.”
The learning centre in Broxburn is equipped with five PCs which are linked to a further three laptops located at each of Glenmorangie’s distilleries - Glen Moray, Glenmorangie in Tain and Ardbeg in Islay.
Open to family, friends and contractors, as well as Glenmorangie staff, the learning centre provides an extensive range of training materials, including health and safety, personnel and management development, European Computer Driving Licence and even courses in foreign languages for business use and in preparation for summer holidays.
In the last year, Glenmorangie plc has seen a 25 percent reduction in accidents as a result of the high standard of health and safety training, which is compulsory for all staff to complete at the learning centre. This equates to a significant saving for the company.
learndirect scotland, the national gateway to learning, recently awarded a grant of £25,000 to Glenmorangie plc to develop a state-of-the-art whisky bottling CD ROM. The new software will be the first of its kind within the whisky industry and will provide virtual training for procedures such as changing the labelling on the bottling line.
Morag said: “This is a technically difficult job to carry out without the appropriate training and can be daunting as well as dangerous. One mistake could cost the company up to £50,000 to replace a part for the machine if the proper procedures are not followed, not to mention the cost of down time incurred.
“The new training will also slash the costly down time of machinery by 66 per cent, reducing the change over of labels from 90 minutes to just 30 minutes. This will give us a significant advantage over our competitors and we hope to implement the CD ROM training in the New Year.”
Chief executive Paul Neep, said: “We strongly believe that emphasis on our culture and people development can bring real business benefits, enabling us to maintain our competitive edge in the global market place.
“The learndirect scotland learning centre plays an important role within the company. Developing the skills of our workforce has resulted not only in increased productivity, and a high retention of staff, but has encouraged a sense of community within the workplace of which we are particularly proud.”
Last year, Glenmorangie was placed 78th in the Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For survey and in the last 12 months the company has leapt up to 42nd place in the poll voted for by staff.