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MKW Engineering ltd

When a young French engineer called unannounced at a Tyneside company he inadvertently set in train a focus on languages that has paid real dividends.

The MKW Engineering Group employs close to 200 across four subsidiaries on sites at Stargate Industrial Estate at Ryton, Gateshead.

Founded in 1976, MKW Engineering Ltd provides specialist engineering solutions in the defence, offshore, sub-sea, chemicals, medical equipment, renewable energy and general engineering sectors.

Associate companies Total Maintenance & Engineering Ltd and Stargate Precision Engineering Ltd offer specialist engineering maintenance services and precision machining respectively, while Gazelle Wind Turbines markets 20kW wind turbines for the group, which has a combined turnover of about £8 million.

While no more than five per cent of the group's business is directly export-related, Group Managing Director Michael Wright explains that when all business relationships are taken into account, that figure rockets to about 60 per cent - and on-site language competence has proved invaluable.

As Rahmon Nassor, Commercial Director, says, having French speakers on the team levels the playing field when MKW are involved in contracts in France. "If we had more French speakers we'd certainly be even better off," he says.

But, compared with your average Tyneside engineering works, MKW has adopted a pretty enterprising approach on the language front.

Michael Wright explains: "We have to go abroad for specialist items and it helps a lot to have people who speak the language. We've got people who are fluent in Italian and Turkish, which is an increasingly important market for us."

Michael Wright with Zoe Mintoe, whose Italian skills have helped the company with its export business.

But it is French that is au coeur of MKW's customer-driven linguistic component. Back to the young man who knocked on the door... It turned out he had been sent to England to find a job in engineering by Les Campagnons du Devoir, a craft training organisation in France, with some 500 years of tradition behind it. MKW were particularly impressed by his skills, and the quality of his training and now regularly take French trainees intent on improving their English, while also sponsoring enthusiastic English trainees to attend Les Campagnons du Devoir.

"It's a steep learning curve for the lads we send: the first one didn't have any French, but he's picked it up now. The other two we've sent had French lessons first and the Prince's Trust helped fund an initial work experience visit."

Besides four young French apprentices at Ryton, MKW is currently also hosting two mechanical engineering degree students on work experience, all of which contributes to a climate at MKW in which the importance of foreign languages is recognised.

For the last two years, the company has run French lessons and, with about eight staff signing up each year, that has helped raise the number of English employees now able to speak basic French to about a dozen.

That overall level of competence recently enabled MKW to help overcome a major language barrier encountered at a South Shields company recently acquired by a French concern. And MKW also sent its French speakers to a prospective contract in France, prompting the comment that it was the only English company to have done so.

Recently, the group has been taking a close look at its opportunities and identified the need for a Turkish speaker to help support a joint venture in wind turbines there, while significant interest from Italy in the same technology suggested the group would also benefit from in-house competence in Italian.

Subject to its success in pursuing other ventures, the future could also see speakers of Mandarin and other languages on the payroll at MKW, as the group proves that while it may be an increasingly small world, it remains a multi-lingual and multi-cultural one.