Pentre Group
For all your packaging & process solutions
Pentre Group
For all your packaging & process solutions
We'll start with a big announcement. Pentre has appointed two senior leaders to guide the group into its next phase of growth.
Duncan Grosvenor becomes Commercial and Finance Director and Kevin Diskin steps into the role of Operations Director. They lead the group jointly.
Between them, Duncan and Kevin bring more than 45 years of engineering and manufacturing leadership.
Duncan has held Finance Director and CFO roles across engineering and manufacturing businesses such as global resin manufacturer AEV (a member of Isovolta) and publicly listed chemicals company Byotrol. An FCCA-qualified accountant who trained in practice and holds an MBA, he has led finance and commercial functions across both UK and overseas operations.
Kevin joins from Röchling Industrial, where he was UK Operations Director. He began his career as a Mechanical Engineering apprentice at Renold PLC and progressed to technical roles, before assuming group-wide operational leadership positions at PPT Group and his board-level role at Röchling. A qualified engineer, he holds both a BEng in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA.
Strong corporate expertise comes from new chair Jeremy Carr, who was previously corporate finance partner at Ford Campbell Manchester and has latterly headed up Energize Capital, a successful investor in medium-sized businesses.
The appointments build on the outstanding work of Richard Johnstone and Julie Meal, who retire after more than five decades' combined service.
Continuity will be a key pillar of this new era, retaining the deep well of technical knowledge that has driven Pentre since 1988. Co-founders Mike Seymour and Howard Platt will remain with the business in a consultancy capacity, forming the non-executive board in tandem with Jeremy.
"The board has structured Pentre's leadership deliberately," says Jeremy. "As joint leaders, Duncan and Kevin will share commercial, financial and operational responsibility at board level.
"It's a structure built for a group operating four manufacturing sites across the UK, Spain and Czechia, with a customer base that spans the globe, and it's the right one for the next stage of growth."
Mike adds: "We chose Duncan and Kevin for their track record with mature, established manufacturing and engineering businesses. They're full of new ideas that will drive Pentre into the future whilst they retain the continuity that's enabled us to serve customers all over the world.
"Our commercial team pride themselves on getting inside a customer's application and offering expertise at every stage: consultation, design, manufacturing, delivery and logistics. This team remains intact."
Duncan and Kevin's foremost priority is to deliver another strong trading year, whilst strengthening the foundations of Pentre's future strategy.
They are already working to identify investment opportunities, achieve further industry-recognised accreditation, build closer alignment across the group's sites, continue to invest in our people and build deeper relationships with the customers we serve.
"Pentre is a technical partner to our customers delivering industry-leading engineered solutions, built on decades of application knowledge," says Kevin. "Commercially, that knowledge is our asset.
"Our growth comes from being in the conversation at the design stage - where the drum, reel or spool is specified rather than simply purchased. That means investing in capability, in our sites and in our people, and giving customers the same impressive level of service they've had since 1988."
"This is a business with real strengths, and we intend to build on every one of them," adds Duncan. "Input costs have risen sharply, and customers increasingly value a supplier that can soften the impact of these increases and have an honest conversation about alternatives rather than simply passing on costs without a second thought.
"Commercially, that means making sure customers see the full capability of the group rather than a single site, extending our reach into new territories, and building relationships deep enough that we're considered a partner rather than simply a supplier."
Want to connect with Duncan and Kevin? You can do so using the details below.