Sika is a Swiss multinational specialty chemical company that supplies to the construction sector and motor vehicle industry. The company develops and produces systems and products for bonding, sealing, damping, reinforcing, and protecting. They supply their products through distribution and specialist contractors. Sika products make the living environment more durable, more reliable and more sustainable, every day.
Sika is established in 93 countries around the world, and within the Sika family there are 17,000
employees. We called into their Preston location, to speak to Lisa Baines, Operations Manager, and Justin Goodwin, who has completed an Apprenticeship with NLTG, to find out more.
Lisa is the Operations Manager for the Preston site, and has been with the company for 23 years. They wanted to see how Apprenticeships would work in their industry to upskill their staff and benefit their business, so they encouraged Justin to take up the course to see how it benefited his development, and what it would bring to the company.
Lisa said, “It gives new learners the opportunity to be able to get some workplace experience as well as the academic side. You have the best of both worlds really, and that’s something that we would like to develop.”
Justin works in Continuous Improvement for Sika. He commented, “I signed onto an Improvement Technician programme with NLTG. It was quite different from what I’m used to, as I worked in Production, but the role I went into made it more applicable. It was a bit of everything really, online and offline work. We started meeting up originally at our other site in Leeds, but because of Covid it mainly went online. What made it easy was the ease I had in getting hold of the tutors.
I’ve never really done anything like this before, at pretty much every turn there were a lot of challenges, so I think having a tutor to get hold of at every turn was really important.
I’d recommend it to anybody. Although I found it challenging, I think you’ve got to have the base skills to do any kind of course to get through it, but ultimately, if you want to do it, and you want to pass it, it just takes a bit of commitment. As long as the course that you’re doing and the tutors you have support you, then there’s no reason why anybody can’t do it!”
Justin achieved the highest grade in his Apprenticeship, a Distinction, and we wish him good luck in his new role!
You can see more about our Apprenticeships at www.nltg.co.uk/apprenticeships/
