A member of the NSG Group, Pilkington United Kingdom Limited is based in St Helens, Merseyside, and at the NSG Group’s European Technical Centre nearby in Lathom, Lancashire. The renowned inventor of the float glass process currently employs around 3,000 people across the UK for its operations, which range from the manufacture of float, rolled and coated glass to glass processing and merchanting, automotive original equipment (OE) and automotive glass replacement (AGR) manufacture.
Neil Syder has a long history with glass – and with the company of which he is now Managing Director – owing to his family’s association with Pilkington UK, which began with his grandfather’s employment as a Warehouse Manager at the firm’s Cowley Hill Works.
Aged five, Mr Syder remembers visiting Pilkington’s plant in Halmstad, Sweden, where the family relocated for two years while his father, as Manufacturing Manager, trained the newly-established business’ employees to make glass.
“I couldn’t claim that I started work at that age but I did go to the plant some weekends when my dad took me in, so I knew my way around the batch plant even then!” Mr Syder recalls. Back in the UK, his father held the position of Works Manager at Pilkington’s Cowley Hill and Greengate plants and ran its (newly invented) float lines – “a brilliant time to be working at Pilkington,” observes Mr Syder.
Neil’s own involvement with Pilkington started in 1987 when he left school, aged 16. Pursuing an interest in engineering and mechanics, he joined the research and development department of Pilkington’s Glass Laboratories in Lathom (now the company’s European Technical Centre). “Pilkington supported me doing a Higher National Diploma (HND) and then a part-time degree so it could be said that I am chemist by trade,” he muses. “I can’t say I’ve used a lot of chemistry in my roles in the past but I guess it’s a way of logically thinking and I learned how to approach and solve certain problems.”
Career to date
Mr Syder moved to Cowley Hill in the late 1980s, progressing from “quite engineering-focused” laboratory work to a role in operations in the early 1990s. This was the era of ‘Pilkington K Glass’, when the UK’s original hard coated, low-emissivity glass for energy efficiency in homes was in development and just becoming a mainstream product. “We had made it in the lab and then in a plant, but this was really the subtlety of making it better, getting longer runs and tweaking the products to improve, for example, the control of the emissivity and colour,” Mr Syder explains. “All those types of things had to be understood fully and with nothing written down, we had to work it out as a group. So it was a very interesting time to be in that type of role at Pilkington.”
From there, he moved into different operational roles, working in warehousing, the cutting section, hot end glassmaking areas and working physically in warehouse loading as a manager. “Eventually in the year 2000 I moved into operational, planning and supply and was there for 12–13 years, during which time the role expanded quite a few times,” he continues. “In 2013 I moved into commercial as Head of Sales for the UK as well as export. I kept the responsibility of planning and supply, so it was a big role but gave me the chance to balance demand against supply, which was very useful!”
In 2017 Mr Syder was made Head of Operations, a role he held until being promoted earlier this year, taking over from outgoing MD Matt Buckley, who retired after a helpful four-month handover. “Obviously I am very proud to be Managing Director but I think it meant even more to my father – he was extremely proud!” confides Mr Syder.