Looking out from Doug Shopland’s office window encapsulates the recent history of British manufacture – a large part of Stenner‘s previous 12-acre site is becoming a new superstore and the groundworkers are clearing away over 100 years of engineering history.
However, before gloom and despondency sets in, this is a success story, brought about by a combination of factors, including Doug’s commitment to the survival of the world’s leading manufacturer of band resawing machinery and the company sticking to what it knows best: design, marketing and assembly.
Doug Shopland, 57, is an ebullient character who gained his initial experience as an engineer in the gas turbine business, based in Lincolnshire and travelling widely throughout the world.
In 1987 he joined Tiverton-based Stenner as sales director; two years later he was managing director. Founded in 1875 by Joseph Stenner, the company had grown to 130 people, producing every component. “We were doing it wrong, with a super workforce stuck in Devon, miles from our customers,” said Doug. “The product had become outdated and we were trying to be everything to everyone.”
Change was necessary: the company was losing money in a market dominated by Scandinavian and Canadian players. “It was a case of learning fast and we made a profit in my first year as MD, the first for several years. We identified what we’re good at, which is wide bandsaws, as a solution provider, who can trade and knows how to get paid!”
The changeover took place in 1990 with over 80 job losses. “Many of those people went to work locally, for companies supplying all the componentry that we used to assemble machines ourselves; some retired and some set up on their own. We sold quite a bit of the machinery from our workshops to them. This left us far more lightweight and focused, as we are today, concentrating on marketing, design, procurement, assembly, testing, shipment, installation and commissioning.”
Management buyout
This leaner company became of interest to many other people and Doug organised a buyout from the existing owners, the Heathcoat-Amory family. “It gave me a 25% shareholding, with investors taking the balance, and with it came the reason to move the business forwards again. The whole arrangement was very friendly, even to the point that the Heathcoat-Amorys agreed to finance the initial working capital and the relationship continued in a sense, with their interests as our landlord for the remainder of the site.”
A complete reassessment saw Stenner move downstream from its concentration on log breakdown, round to square and fencing resaws to the PK (flooring component sawing) and ST (square timber to boards) ranges. Stenner’s current range comprises: High Speed Wet Side, ‘Big Twin’ for splitting, Stand Alone/ST 80 – 150 and the PK system.
The market for these machines is dependent on different countries’ requirements as Doug explained. “We supply machines all over the world. Australasia, Japan and North America are big users of our log side machinery, Scandinavia and northern Europe tend to be large markets for our twin machines, leaving the Far East and South America for the PK range. The ST range gets shipped all over the place and, of course, the UK represents a large slice of the entire range.”
World travel
“We have machines in 126 countries; 127 if you count the Falkland Islands. Servicing all this machinery takes some doing and our team travels the world. One of the best ones we remember is when a machine needed installing in St Helena. Our service man flew to Ascension Island, then went by cargo boat for 10 days each way. The boat broke down, so they got him to fix it!”
This strategy has ensured that the business has maintained its prominence in bandsaw technology, particularly with the PK range, where thin strips can be produced at high speed to very fine tolerances.
The existing board and shareholder structure “had run its course” and Doug finally reached his goal in 2004 with the refinancing of Stenner, leaving him with an 80% shareholding; his colleagues Sid Mather and Fred Harding are the other shareholders.
Running a worldwide sales company means that Doug and his team travel extensively and a constant round of trade fairs and sales missions means they are away for long stretches. Quite how Doug finds the time for any social life after all this is a mystery, but he is a trustee of the Devon Air Ambulance and enjoys golf, hill walking, watching rugby and many horse events – including the Stenner Novice Hurdle at Exeter.
