Warwickshire skills hub supporting 3P Innovation in bid to recruit more engineers
Warwickshire engineering business 3P Innovation is being supported by the county council and local universities as it bids to recruit new staff to continue its expansion.
The company, established in 2006 and which transitioned to employee-ownership in 2020, designs and makes food, health and personal care products. Its expertise has likely gone into many of the items seen in homes around the UK.
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Dr Dave Seaward, one of the six founders of 3P Innovation and projects director, said: "Our biggest challenge is around recruitment of technical staff. We operate in a niche and highly technical market due to the custom nature of the equipment we design and develop for our customers.
"Truly innovative products don’t have standard machinery to make them, and a truly innovative product isn’t viable unless it can be manufactured at scale. This is where we come in. Our international clients approach 3P to make their product ideas become a reality.
"We met with Warwickshire County Council since they had spotted we are a high-growth business and they asked ‘how could you grow even faster?’ Our biggest constraint on growth is technical talent. Sadly, despite the rewarding roles available many young people simply don’t consider a career in STEM subjects including engineering."
The county council's Skills Hub has now referred 3P Innovation’s STEM ambassadors to the University of Warwick and Coventry University, while the Warwickshire careers hub is interacting with local schools to inspire pupils to potentially work for companies such as 3P Innovation.
The company said it is also developing deeper links with the University of Warwick, Birmingham University and Aston University ensuring that local graduates understand what a "cool place 3P is to work".
"We have targeted 20% year-on-year growth with ambitions to double in size to fill our new building," said Seaward.
"It is however a challenge to train more than about 8% new engineering graduates each year. Growth is inevitably limited if we can’t find enough capable engineers to expand our successful company."
The company moved into a newly-constructed 30,000 sq ft premises at Tournament Fields business park in Warwick last summer - the building is a carbon copy of the HQ building next door as part of the firm's plans to more than double its current size.
Steven Convery, business skills support officer at Warwickshire Skills Hub, said: "The Warwickshire area is a global hub for design, engineering and manufacturing, with a rich mix of innovative SMEs and larger well-known blue-chip companies.
"We have an excellent vocational training, further and higher education institutions, but such is the demand for creative, design and engineering skills, our Skills Hub is working with partners to identify gaps and provide help and support where we can, to make sure industry has the skills supply it needs now and in the future, and our residents continue to have opportunities for work in well-paid, rewarding work."
3P Innovation won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation in 2020 and the Queen’s Award in International Trade a year later. It was also awarded a Princess Royal Training Award in 2021.
