Scottish Leather Group makes senior management changes
27/04/2012
Jamie Davidson, sales director of one of the group’s tanneries, Bridge of Weir Leather Company, is to join the board of directors of the group. He has headed up the sales operation of Bridge of Weir, which specialises in high-end finished upholstery leather for clients in the automotive industry, since 2005. A leather technology graduate from the University of Northampton, he grew up with the leather industry with long-time family connections to the group, and has been working in the industry since the mid-1980s. SLG said Mr Davidson would bring valuable sales experience to the board, especially within the automotive sector, as well as an international outlook, having worked extensively in the Americas and Asia.
Karen Marshall, already a director of SLG, is to become the new managing director of Bridge of Weir Leather Company. She began working at the Bridge of Weir tannery as an accountant in 1991 and now has a breadth of experience across the group. She has been a director of another of the group’s operating companies, NCT Leather, which provides wet blue and wet white, and has been influential in the success of a joint venture with Zibo Dahuanjiu Polygrace Tannery Group Ltd in China, set up in 2009. She succeeds Iain McFadyen as managing director of Bridge of Weir Leather Company. This appointment allows Iain McFadyen, now Scottish Leather Group managing director, to devote more of his time to each of the companies within the group and to strategic matters generally, SLG said.
At the same time, Lesley Chalk has been made a director of SLG Technology Ltd, the division that provides accounting, environmental and IT services to the rest of the group; she is its company secretary. She has spent the last 20 years in the leather industry, in finance and business administration functions, and has worked within SLG since 2006.
Finally, Steven Ireland has become a director of NCT Leather Ltd. An accountancy graduate from the nearby University of Paisley (now the University of the West of Scotland), he brings extensive international accounting, retail sector and manufacturing experience to NCT Leather, where he is company secretary. He worked for some years in the US and returned to the UK as an accountant for retail group House of Fraser. He has worked within the Scottish Leather Group since 2008 as accountant and company secretary and now as a director of NCT Leather.
Commenting on the changes, SLG chairman, Jonathan Muirhead, said: “The Scottish Leather Group board welcomes Jamie, Karen, Lesley and Steven to their new positions. They bring excellent credentials from across the leather industry and around the world to their roles, and bring a new and broader base of knowledge and experience to the senior management teams. Following recent successes across the group, these new appointments will help take the businesses from strength to strength in very interesting times for the world leather industry.”
All appointees maintain their existing positions within the subsidiary companies as well as their new responsibilities, and all appointments are effective immediately.
Other operating companies within the group are Andrew Muirhead & Son, a tannery in Glasgow that specialises in aviation leather, and W J and W Lang, a tannery that produces wet blue and wet white in Paisley.The group’s client base includes premium automotive brands such as Volvo, Aston Martin and Jaguar Land Rover, as well as customers within the aviation, rail and marine interiors sectors.
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