Baxendale is excited to announce that Andrew Lane us as a Trustee last month.
Originally from Yorkshire and educated at Leeds Polytechnic, Andrew started as a Design Engineer at Caterpillar in the North of England. He then joined a startup in an American family-owned company, working his way up from a Project Engineer to leadership roles in manufacturing. Andrew transformed the company by focusing on people power, information sharing, transparency and teamwork, boosting revenue from under £500K to over £11M.
Later on, he helped set up a UK branch for an American company and navigated challenges to sell it, saving jobs and benefiting the parent company. Returning to Yorkshire, Andrew played a crucial role in turning Sutcliffe Play into an employee-owned business. As the Managing Director of Union Industries, he led another successful shift to Employee Ownership, growing the company’s revenue from under £5M to around £11.5M. Throughout his career, Andrew has been passionate about a fair business model, making sure that success is shared with the entire team.
Andrew says, “Having spent a good part of my working life looking for a business model that really satisfied my desire for formal inclusion of the workforce and sharing the benefits that the resultant commercial success would generate, I firmly believe employee ownership can be that model. It was a Baxendale Leadership Development course, all the way back in 2010, that really convinced me of the power of Employee Ownership, the lessons I learned there still guide my thinking to this day. I view Baxendale as Employee Ownership royalty and its an honour to join them as a Trustee.”
Ceri Jones, Managing Director at Baxendale says, “It has been a pleasure to welcome Andrew to Baxendale and we are delighted to have him on board. His experience in bringing companies into employee ownership and driving shared success is outstanding. He has already met our colleagues during our recent Team Day and shared some inspiring insights from his years of experience across various sectors. We look forward to working together as we make our ambitious corporate goals a reality over the next few years.”
