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‘Master of the trade’, 69, comes out of retirement to return and work alongside former apprentice

One of the country’s leading compression moulding experts has come out of retirement and returned to Fairgrieves – where he spent 48 years honing his skills and inspiring and teaching the next generation.

Lenny Moulding has returned to our buisness at the age of 69, four years after retiring, to help as we have taken on an increase of orders and moved to 24-hour manufacturing to meet customer demand.

Mr Moulding has teamed up once again alongside his former apprentice Johnathon Hutchinson, who is now production manager of the business, using all the skills he learned from ‘the master of the trade’.

“It’s great to be back and seeing the business doing so well,” said Mr Moulding, who first joined the company on January 8^th, 1973, and returned 52 years later to the day.

“Fairgrieves has been a huge part of my life, and after retiring, although I got myself into a bit of gardening, I missed the place.

“I’d often come back to visit and see the team, and when I popped in late last year Barry Davidson, the managing director, told me about a number of new orders they had secured, and said that I’d be more than welcome to come back and do a couple of days a week.

“I didn’t really need to think twice. In the latter years that I was here, the business hadn’t been doing too well and it had been neglected really, but over the past three years or so it has been transformed into a really modern, well-run, efficient business under its new ownership and leadership.

“It’s great to have come back and be part of it now it is in such good health, with better processes now in place and such an impressive factory to work in. It’s an absolute joy.”

Training the next generation

Mr Moulding, who was mould shop team leader during his first stint, has now returned as part-time machine operator.

He says he is delighted to be working on the factory floor alongside Mr Hutchinson again, who he took under his wing at the age of just 19, almost 15 years ago.

“It’s great to see Johnathon leading the factory floor team so well today. He was always very keen to learn and very quick to pick things up, so I’ve not been surprised at how he has risen through the ranks,” he said.

“I always tried to instill in my team that it was always about quality. It was about doing the job right and focusing on quality first, as the quantity of orders will then follow.”

‘Strong work ethic and sense of pride’

Mr Hutchinson, 33, says Lenny crucially taught him not only the ‘how’, but also the ‘why’ of compression moulding – a skill which has served him well as the business has had to innovate and develop new products to meet the demands of clients.

“I feel lucky to have learned from Lenny because he really is a master of the trade and there is nothing about compression moulding that he doesn’t know,” he said.

“Every job is different and has many different variable end applications, and Lenny not only showed me how to do things, but he explained the thinking and the methodology behind why he would work in certain ways, and the benefits it would bring not only to the manufacturing process, but also the end product, which has been invaluable.

“He always led from the front and instilled a strong work ethic in his team, and a sense of pride in their work to produce the very best products. It’s only by having people like that in your team that you can succeed in business for more than 100 years, as Fairgrieves has.

“I’ve tried to follow in his footsteps, and it’s great to have him back.”

‘Nobody to match experience’

Barry Davidson, managing director, said: “When Lenny decided to retire a few years ago we lost a huge influence within the business given his knowledge and wealth of experience, and we were fortunate that he had invested so much time into training the next generation of our team, with Johnathon in particular being a protégé.

“We’ve always kept in touch and he’s popped in to see us regularly, and given the recent increase in business that we’ve secured our conversation changed to him possibly returning a couple of days a week. I was delighted when he showed such enthusiasm to come back.

“If we were to go out looking to recruit a new machinist, we simply couldn’t find anyone to match his compression moulding knowledge, experience and skill, and he’s just a great person to have around too.

“He lives for the job, and our business, and of course even has the perfect name for it too!”

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