Rolls-Royce seeks candidates for leather apprenticeships
09/02/2012
Rolls-Royce said its use of leather in its car interiors is one of the areas in which it wants to recruit and train new craftspeople.
The company’s Apprenticeship Programme was launched in 2006 to provide people aged 16-24 with the opportunity to train at its factory in West Sussex in the south of England and learn to make its luxury cars. The apprenticeships last for up to four years and combine on-the-job training with studying for nationally recognised qualifications. More than 30 young people have been employed in different disciplines following completion of the apprenticeship.
It takes more than two weeks to complete the upholstered interior of a Rolls-Royce car, using A-grade bull hides cut into 450 individual pieces and sewn together with more than 35 metres of decorative stitching. Many members of the leathershop team were skilled in saddlery before they joined and the company has said it's a combination of modern technology and the craft skills these people have brought that allows it to finish its leather interiors to such high standards. It is these craft skills that Rolls-Royce now wants to pass on to a new generation of skilled workers.
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