Amtico international is a progressive, design-led flooring company. As market leaders in the manufacture and design of luxury vinyl tile flooring, they strive to be the best in their industry. Professionally respected, industry accredited and advocated by designers, contractors and architects alike, Amtico flooring is the result of hard work by their global service, manufacturing and design teams:
1. Please can you give us an overview of what your company does ie: the sector in which your business belongs, what your product base is and what the aims of your business are?
Amtico offers an innovative flooring offer based on its Luxury Vinyl Tile (LVT) collection and will soon broaden that offering introducing a number of new product initiatives that will enable it to offer a fully integrated flooring solution to the wider market.
2. Which sectors does your business service/ do you provide products to?
A versatile and extensive range of products equips designers and end-user alike with flooring to complement any space, commercial or residential, on any scale.
3. How many people do you employ/ have on site?
Amtico employs 413 in the Solihull & Coventry sites and sales representatives throughout the UK
4. What types of people do you like to employ? And what skills and background are required?
There are nine competencies (see below) which form part of all role profiles and used in the personal development plans for the majority of our employees.
- Business Awareness
- Inclusive Leadership
- Collaborative Team Working
- Business Focused Innovation
- Drive to Deliver
- Problem Solving
- People Development
- Customer Commitment
- Organisational Excellence
5. Have you recently noticed any skills shortages? If so, in which areas?
Engineering
6. How do you see the industry changing in the future?
Floor manufacturers will start to offer integrated design so the LVT marker will become more competitive.
7. How do you see your business changing in the future to reflect industry changes?
Amtico will need to ensure every product is expertly produced to combine stunning design with technical excellence, meeting the highest of expectations in what will be a more competitive market.
8. Do you see the skills you require from your employees changing?
Broader skills for the chemists we recruit; they need to be able to be capable of covering activities beyond traditional R&D with emphasis in project management , production support /process development and sales support. This will also entail more cross-functional working and so good communication skills are vital. The days of entirely bench chemistry-based R&D are disappearing!
9. Do you foresee any future skills shortages?
We can already see that good experienced polymer chemists/polymer technologists are proving hard to find. I cannot see the situation improving any time soon as Polymer Chemistry courses in University departments contract
10. What core skills would you recommend that new entrants try to attain to help their career
- Good understanding of the technology and processing of polymers in particular flexible PVC
- Project management
- Understanding of analytical techniques
- Effective Microsoft Office IT skills
11. What advice would you give people considering a career in the chemical sector?
Experience is at a premium for new graduates so those graduates who have undertaken applied courses involving a year out in industry will be at an advantage.
If financial reward is important, it is still possible to find good opportunities in the UK but you may need to look into Europe (eg Belgium and Germany) and beyond, to pursue the most lucrative careers.