Packaging Solutions
Tray sealing specialist Proseal UK has been named ‘Large Business Apprenticeship Employer of the Year’ by Macclesfield College, underlining the company’s commitment to developing the next generation of engineers.
The honour comes after Proseal opened a new dedicated training centre at its global headquarters in Adlington and significantly expanded its apprenticeship scheme, increasing its capacity to provide training.
The awards ceremony at Mottram Hall, Macclesfield, also saw Proseal second year apprentice Louis Wright receive an individual award for ‘Engineering Apprentice of the Year’.
‘It is fantastic to be recognised like this for our apprenticeship scheme, and I’d like to congratulate Louis on his well deserved individual award,’ said Andy Gray, training manager at Proseal. ‘We began working with Macclesfield College at the same time as we expanded the course and opened our training centre, so it is a real vindication of both decisions.’
The new Proseal Apprentice Training System (PATS) enables aspiring engineers to gain experience in every area of Proseal’s business, with a view to finding their path in the company and maximising their career potential.
Over a four year schedule, apprentices are supported through a combination of practical training, mentoring by qualified and experienced staff, tuition at the Proseal training centre, and off site work experience at customer sites and various businesses around the UK.
The establishment of the on-site training centre means classroom and shop floor learning are much more closely linked than before. In addition, whereas the company previously took on three or four apprentices per year, there are now 28 apprentices in the scheme, with specialisations including mechanics, assembly, electrical, systems and tool design.
‘Apprentices have been a vital part of Proseal from the very beginning, so it was a natural progression to set up a more structured and widely available programme,’ said Andy. ‘We have seen the benefits that training our employees has on our success as a business.’
This success recently saw Proseal receive a Queen’s Award for International Trade – recognition of the company’s outstanding continuous growth in export sales.
‘We want to continue to grow the business, and this can only be done by training our future staff to the highest levels of expertise to maintain our world class standards,’ concluded Andy. ‘After the Queen’s Award, these latest honours from Macclesfield College show how our training programme will be instrumental in achieving this.’
