By Scott Wright

THE new chief executive of Scottish Leather Group has underlined his confidence in the company’s growth potential as it embarks on a major recruitment drive following a significant uptick in orders.

Steve Henning replaced long-standing boss Iain McFadyen at the helm five weeks ago and has been immediately impressed with the expansion prospects of a family-owned company that can trace its history back over eight generations.

The company, which supplies leather to high-profile names in the automotive and aviation sectors, is in the midst of a recruitment drive to fill 60 roles, with orders up 75 per cent on the same stage last year. Staff are being sought to fill roles in a wide variety of functions, from engineering and manufacturing to accounting and IT, as the business looks to service rising demand from clients such as Aston Martin, Jaguar Land Rover, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Polestar, Lucid, Emirates, and Ryanair.

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Mr Henning joined Scottish Leather Group after holding senior executive roles for companies in a range of sectors, including Dyson, Franke, Buhler and Vispring in North America, Germany and Switzerland. He said the company, which employs around 1,000 people across Renfrewshire, is fortunate to have a roster of “amazing customers”. And he declared it was well positioned to grow, despite the well-documented supply chain difficulties and cost inflation that are blighting the outlook for the economy.

The firm’s most recent accounts show that it made a pre-tax loss of £1.06 million in the year ended March 31, following a profit of £766,000 the year before, amid ongoing supply chain disruption.

However, turnover increased to £90.05m from £73m on the back of higher volumes of leather produced and sold, which came as the aviation and automotive sectors emerged from Covid restrictions.

While Mr Henning emphasised that Scottish Leather Group was not immune from inflationary pressures, he said the company was benefitting from its position supplying the top-end of the market, meaning it is not competing for business on volume-led products. With clients in the car industry selling vehicles for as much as £80,000, he told The Herald: “People at the luxury end are less affected by economic worries. We were still seeing good demand through Covid.”

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He said that if it was “normal cars” the company was supplying, manufactures would be taking action to “drive down costs”.

“I am not saying there is no cost pressure, but it is [manageable],” he said. “If you are talking about Rolls-Royce or Jaguar … they are focused on top-end vehicles.”

The recruitment drive comes shortly after Scottish Leather Group opened a new £4 million leather cutting plant in the former Chivas Brothers bottling plant in Paisley.

The site employs around 200 people, who engage in cutting, packing, and distributing leather to customers in the car and airline sectors, after receiving the raw product from the company’s tannery in Bridge of Weir.

Current projects include a deal with Ryanair, which is replacing the cloth upholstery on its aircraft seats with leather supplied by the Scottish firm.

Scottish Leather Group comprises three businesses, Bridge of Weir, Lang, and Muirhead, which between them have around 500 years of operational experience.

Mr Henning praised the owners of the company for continuing to invest in its infrastructure throughout the pandemic, highlighting a £13m project in 2020 to upgrade facilities in Bridge of Weir. That included the development of a waste-water plant, which allows it to reuse water that it is used in the tanning process.

Mr Henning said the company was on track to become net zero in terms of carbon emissions by 2025.

“We use as little water as we can,” Mr Hennings said.

Asked to comment on the outlook for the firm, Mr Henning declared that, given current demand from the automotive and aviation sectors: “I’m confident we will not just get back to pre-Covid levels, but exceed them.”

And he underlined the company’s ongoing commitment to the local communities in which its companies are based: “Renfrewshire will always be the heart and soul of the business.”