It is now almost three years since Crittall, an Essex-based window manufacturer with a history spanning well over a century, acquired the trade and assets of Fendor – a specialist designer and manufacturer of high security, ballistic, and bomb-proof fenestration, which also supplies windows to the custodial, mental health, and petrochemical industries.
Here, in a ‘Q&A’ article, The Network’s editor, Jonathan Baillie, discusses some of the key developments in the intervening busy period with Crittall Fendor MD, Graham Eyles.
Graham Eyles (GE) began by telling me a little about his own professional background and expertise, before I put a series of questions to him. He explained that, having been born and bred in Essex, he has remained native to the county, living in Billericay for past 30 years, and commuting to Washington, Tyne & Wear, where Crittall Fendor has a sizeable office and factory facility – ‘for 30-40 per cent of the working month’. A qualified accountant, and a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants since 1991, he began his career as a commercial apprentice with Fenner Plc, where he ‘gained an all-round understanding’ of pneumatic engineering business, and the activities of all the company’s commercial departments, eventually ‘majoring’ in Finance.
His subsequent career saw him employed by subsidiaries of key British and European plcs, including Cape Industries, Pilkington, Kingspan, Vinci, and Marconi, and he has almost 30 years’ director-level experience. Joining Crittall in 2005, he became CWL Finance director, and then Group Financial director, in 2017, and was appointed MD of CFENL in January 2019, having been involved in the integration of all the Group’s acquisitions, including the Fendor business in Washington. He explained: “During this period I also helped manage the post-MBO recovery of CWL, from 2005 through its transition to new premises in Witham in 2007, and led the project to apply for the Queen’s Award for International Trade in 2010, which was achieved for our successful trading in the export market, particularly in the US.” The Group continues to enjoy commercial success in America; it has recently completed a second major project for ‘one of the US’s premier Ivy League colleges’. Today, Graham Eyles manages the newly acquired Crittall Fendor, which was merged with the Crittall Fabrications business in April 2018.
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