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The James Walker site at Cockermouth has made an impressive recovery following November’s floods, but a rapid return to production is only the beginning.
Peter Needham, chairman of the James Walker Group, explains the recovery process and what is still needed.
“Our customers have, without doubt, been impressed by the strength of our business continuity plans and the commitment of our workforce throughout this disaster and so far have demonstrated great trust, support and loyalty to James Walker as one of their key suppliers. Looking to the future however, we know that we need to offer greater levels of assurance that customer supply chains for critical components will not be compromised.
Without some form of flood resistance we cannot offer the necessary guarantee of continuity. We have therefore been working with the NW Regional Development Agency and the West Cumbria Development Agency to find ways of protecting our site as we continue to lobby for long-term flood defences for the Cockermouth area.
A survey of the James Walker site by environmental engineering consultants identified possibilities for three levels of defence. These ranged from co-ordinated flood defences for the Cockermouth area through to flood resilience measures which can be built into the fabric of our site.
Based on the consultants’ report we have been able to secure funding towards the cost of installing the recommended flood resilience measures. These will allow us to protect our plant, equipment and materials should the site be subject to flooding again.
We understand that further detailed studies are currently in progress with regard to Cockermouth and we will continue to lobby and support the community’s demands for defences that will secure the town and its surrounding area against future events of the magnitude of November’s flood.
The flooding of our production unit and Materials Technology Centre in Cockermouth last November was undoubtedly a major set-back to our business, particularly in the current tough market conditions, but a highly effective recovery plan and a fantastic effort by our workforce has seen us enter 2010 in better shape than we could have expected when we first assessed the damage.
Despite many of our employees being affected by the floods, our staff volunteered to work through the Christmas holiday period to help make up for time lost during the flood clean-up and to catch up on back-orders. This commitment even allowed us to satisfy emergency requests from some of our customers and means that we have come into January better able to focus on new orders and on quoting competitive manufacturing times.
This event has proven beyond any doubt, the strength of our business continuity planning, the resilience and commitment of our workforce and the comprehensive support available through the global James Walker Group. Now, with additional confidence gained from securing assistance towards the installation of flood resilience measures at our Cockermouth site, we are totally focused on pushing forward to win business as customers come out of the recession".
