80 Years of the The Wernick Group is one of the …...80 Years of the Wernick Group A Continuing Story of Growth and Success Nigel Watson Nigel Watson has been writing corporate histories

80 Years of the Wernick GroupA Continuing Story of Growth and Success

Nigel Watson

Nigel Watson has been writing corporate histories for 30 years. He has covered a wide range of organisations, from successful family businesses to global corporations, from independent schools to new universities. More information can be obtained fromwww.corporatehistories.org.uk

The Wernick Group is one of the UK’s largestproviders of portable accommodation,operating from 36 sites, employing 550 peopleand with a turnover in 2013 of more than £85million. The company has come a long waysince Sam Wernick, a refugee from thepogroms of Tsarist Russia, first began buildingchicken sheds in his back yard inWolverhampton in 1934. The story of theGroup is very much a family affair, with the keysecond stage in its development overseen bySam’s four sons, Solly, Nat, Joe and Lionel, who set up factories in the Midlands and theSouth-East, establishing a national, even aninternational, reputation. Under Lionel’s sonDavid, the Group has become one of theleading UK portable accommodation hirebusinesses, and Wernick units can be seen allover the UK. A new factory in South Walesmanufactures modular accommodation of thehighest quality for a wide group of clients. The Group has entered the event hire industry,operates a flourishing refurbishedaccommodation business and JonathanWernick, David’s son, has become the fourthgeneration of the family to join the Group.

Front cover illustration: Sam Wernick, thefounder, facing the camera on the left, at atrade show in the late 1940s.

80 Years of the Wernick G

roup - A Conti

nuing Story of Grow

th and Successby N

igel Watson

Rear cover illustration: Three generations – Simon Doran (third generation, son-in-law of Lionel Wernick, and chief executive of theWernick Group), Lionel Wernick (second generation, sonof the founder and life president of the Wernick Group), David Wernick (third generation, son of Lionel Wernick,and chairman of the Wernick Group) and Jonathan Wernick (fourth generation, son of David Wernick and general manager, Wernick Event Hire).

Wernicks Covers_Layout 1 06/08/2014 16:18 Page 1

Foreword By David Wernick 4

Acknowledgements 5

1 Beginnings 1889-1914 6

2 Into business 1914-47 8

3 A family concern 1947-71 13

4 Exports and hire 1971-95 27

5 A nationwide business 1995 onwards 47

First published 2014 in Great Britain bySt Matthew’s Press

10 St Matthew’s Terrace, Leyburn, North Yorkshire DL8 5ELwww.corporatehistories.org.uk

Copyright © Nigel Watson & Wernick Group Ltd 2014

Printed and published privately by St Matthew’s Press for the Wernick Group

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted in any form or by any means,electronics, mechanical, photocopying or recording, or used in any information storage retrieval system,

without prior permission in writing from the copyright holders.

Wernick Group, Molineux House, Russell Gardens, Wickford, Essex, SS11 8BL

Tel: +44 (0) 1268 735544Website - www.wernick.co.uk

Design and artwork by Brian Glanfield CREATIVE DESIGNPrinted and bound by

Jeremy Mills Publishing Limited, 113 Lidget Street, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire HD3 3JR

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank David Wernick for his encouragement and support during the course ofresearching and writing this short history of the Group. I have also been helped by manyother people who also deserve my thanks. In particular I would like to thank all those whoagreed to share their recollections of the business with me: Doris Cavadasca, Simon Doran,Denis Gibson, Ian Griffiths, Sylvia Harper, Kath Hodges, Alan Hollyoak, Edna Hunt, RichardJackson, Julian Johns, Liam Muldoon, Steve Potter, Steve Pridmore, Jeff Pritchard, SimonReffell, Eddie Shaw, Pat Shayler, Garry Sylvester, Peter Tanner, David Wernick, Eileen Wernick,Jonathan Wernick and Lionel Wernick. I would also like to say thanks to Sharon Aspinall forhelping me to organise my various visits and interviews and making sure I was never short oftea or coffee.

Nigel WatsonSummer 2014

5

Foreword By David Wernick

This is the story about the arrival of my Grandfather, Samuel Wernick, to Britain in 1902 atthe tender age of 13, the creation of Wernicks in 1934 and its subsequent history up to2013. It is the story of a family who from very humble beginnings have gone on to createthe oldest and one of the largest providers of portable accommodation in the UK.

The story spans four generations of the family and relates the ups and downs that thecompany has experienced over its first 80 years.

It tells how Sam with his children started a small shed-building business in their back gardenin the Midlands and, with the help of an incredibly loyal workforce, succeeded in creating acompany that was and is the envy of many of its competitors.

The Wernick Group today is made up of five main trading companies, operates from 36 sitesaround the UK, had revenues in excess of £85 million and profits in excess of £10 million in2013 and employs over 550 people.

The Group remains 100 per cent owned by the Wernick family and is deeply committed toremaining private in the future. I believe that by the company remaining private it cancontinue on its current path of growth through both acquisition and its commitment toquality of product and focus on customer satisfaction.

I am often heard reminding our employees that I don’t pay their salaries – our customersdo! If one saying can sum up the overriding philosophy of the Group, it is, The Customer is King.

The Wernick family is deeply indebted to all past and current employees and all of our loyalcustomers who have made this success possible.

David WernickChairmanSummer 2014

4

house, already home to the seven-strong familyand their servant Leah. The twoboys worked for a shilling a weekplus their boots.

The experience made a markedimpression on both boys.Although they returned toPoland, they were determinedthat one day they too wouldfollow the example of their uncleJoseph and seek their fortune in Britain.

The boys stayed in Poland almostuntil the eve of the First WorldWar. When they returned toBritain, they came with theirbrides, having married sisters:Bertha, who was Sam’s wife, andShanka, who was married toJoseph. Bertha was bright andintelligent but quieter than her

outgoing and extrovert husband. Although Samwould learn to speak perfect English, Berthanever lost her accent. The couple brought withthem their first son, Solomon, always known asSolly, who had been born in Poland on 30 June1913. (Six more children would follow: threedaughters, Yetta, born in 1915, Sadie, born in1916, and Joan, born in 1923; and three sons,Nathan, born in 1918, Joseph, born in 1921, andLionel, born in 1928 .)

By now there were some 300,000 Jews in Britain.They may have seen the country as a safe havenbut many Jews still suffered anti-Semitic tauntsand discrimination from their non-Jewishneighbours. They continued to find safety innumbers in Jewish enclaves in major cities,including Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham,Leeds and Glasgow. Sam, Bertha and Solly renteda house in Plumbers Row, Whitechapel, lyingbetween Commercial Road and WhitechapelRoad, just a few minutes’ walk from uncleJoseph’s baker’s shop. A little later they moved toDuke Street, close to Aldgate, and it was herethey were living when war broke out.

7

Beginnings 1889-1924

In 1902, when Samuel Wernick first landed inEngland with his elder brother Joseph, he camenot as a refugee but as a visitor. Sam’s uncle,Joseph, had sought asylum in England in theearly 1880s. He had settled amongst anestablished Jewish community in the East End ofLondon where he ran a flourishing baker’s shop.He had invited his two young nephews (Sam wasonly thirteen years old) to come over and spendtime working for him in the shop.

The family Joseph Wernick left behind lived inWarsaw, the capital of Poland, although thecountry had been part of the Russian empiresince the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Thecountry also formed part of what was known asthe Pale of Settlement, a vast tract of landcovering the empire’s fifteen westernmostprovinces. In the 1880s this was home to nearlyfive million Jews, whose lives werecircumscribed by a plethora of discriminatoryrules and regulations. Many had already left fora better life elsewhere, with 350,000 believed tohave emigrated during the 1870s, most endingup in the United States.

In May 1881 the Russian tsar, Alexander II, wasassassinated. Although there was only one Jewamongst the assassins, it was the Jews whosuffered most from the subsequent backlash.The repressive reaction of the new tsar,Alexander III, caused the expulsion of thousandsof Jews from their villages, and resultantovercrowding in the towns to which they were sent.

For many more Jews, the further decline in theirquality of life prompted a massive increase in

emigration. This time many of those whocrossed the North Sea decided to settle inBritain. Amongst them were Joseph Wernick andhis wife Rebecca, who headed for the well-established Jewish community in London’s EastEnd. In the twenty years between 1881 and1901 the immigrant Jewish population in the UK is estimated to have increased from 15,000to 95,000.

In the East End, the tightly packed Jewishquarter was concentrated in the streets leadingoff Petticoat Lane, although Joseph and Rebeccaheaded for the community centred on TenterGround, south of Whitechapel Road. WithJewish neighbours on every side, all speakingthe same language and sharing the samereligion and traditions, the Wernicks made theirhome in 9 Coke Street, and it was here in 1884that their eldest son Ruben was born. By thenthe community was expanding to accommodatethe steady influx of immigrants, and by the turnof the century it was reckoned that nearly one inthree residents in Whitechapel was Jewish.Although the area became overcrowded,housing conditions were often squalid and theimmigrants often received less than a warmwelcome from the citizens of their host nation,they had at last found a refuge from repression.

Born in 1889, Sam was one of five sons andthree daughters born to Issa and MiriamWernick in Warsaw. Sam and his brother Joseph,who was three years older, were following in thefootsteps of many thousands of their fellow Jewswhen they sailed across the North Sea. Theywould have been greeted enthusiastically bytheir uncle and aunt, squeezing into their small

6

80 years of the Wernick Group

Beginnings 1889-19141

A young Sam Wernick.Joseph Wernick'sbaker's shop in CokeStreet in the EastEnd of London.

during his time as a poultry dealer. Armed withthis experience, he set up in business after hisdischarge as a kosher butcher at 202 KensingtonPark Road, in London’s Notting Hill. But the1920s was not the easiest time for starting up anew business, particularly in an area that waspoor and run-down, quite unlike today’sfashionable, upmarket and expensive part of town.

Instead, Sam and Joseph returned to poultrydealing, travelling to mid-Wales to pick up oldhens long past laying for a shilling apiece, andtaking them back to the East End, where theysold them to the local kosher butchers. It wouldhave been hard work. Motor traffic was stillscarce, with just 150,000 motor goods vehicleson the road in the early 1920s, and the vehiclesthemselves were primitive and unreliable. Long-distance haulage could be a hair-raisingexperience, driving vehicles with under-poweredengines, brakes fitted only to the rear wheels,and no windscreen wipers. Journeys at anaverage speed of just 12 mph on oftenunmetalled roads seemed to take forever, withdrivers often working all day and all night.

Sam was never afraid of hard work. As well asthe long hours he put into driving back and forthto the East End, he also turned his hand tomaking the wooden crates for carrying the hens.He was so practical that his wife Bertha wouldsay to him, ‘Samuel, you have golden hands!’When one farmer asked him how much he paid for his crates, Sam told him, ‘Don’t be abloody fool! I make them myself!’ But thequestion prompted Sam and his brother to beginselling the crates, priced at a shilling each, fromthe roadside.

Sam obviously decided that selling poultry cratesto Midlands poultry farmers had more of afuture than selling old hens to the kosherbutchers of the East End. His youngest son Lionelrecalled that the family moved to Oswestry, asmall town on the Welsh border west ofShrewsbury, when Lionel was two years old in

1930. Sam and his family shared the same semi-detached house with his brother Joseph, his wifeand four children. Eighteen months later thefamily moved again, putting a pin in a map andsettling on Wolverhampton, a larger town betterlocated for sending poultry to London. For tenshillings a week Sam rented a house inPrestwood Road from the local brewery, whichowned the pub, The Prestwood Arms, next door.When the brewery wanted the property back toexpand the pub, the family left with £50compensation, and moved to a larger house at127 Waterloo Road, with a spacious back garden.While Joseph carried on working with Sam, healso ran the poultry business, employing his ownson, known as ‘Big Solly’ to distinguish him from‘Little Solly’, Sam’s son, to drive the hens toLondon. Lionel Wernick rememberedaccompanying his uncle back from Wellington inShropshire to Wolverhampton, the two dozenhens Joseph had just bought flapping aroundexcitedly in the back of the car.

The early 1930s were even more difficult. In1931-32 the level of unemployment averagedfifteen per cent, compared with a maximum rateof a little over eight per cent during the mostrecent recession. In reality the figures were evenworse, since the official statistics covered only

9

Into business 1914-1947

On 4 August 1914 Britain declared war onGermany. Men from Jewish families establishedin the UK for several generations believed theyshould fight for their country and many of themwere quick to enlist. By the end of the war morethan 55,000 Jews were serving in the Britisharmed forces. Sam Wernick was not amongstthem. As an alien immigrant without citizenship,he was forbidden from serving on the front line.Instead, Sam was making a living dealing inpoultry, capitalising on the particular fondness ofthe Jewish community for chicken soup.

This situation changed following the revolutionin Russia in 1917, after which Britain viewed the

Bolshevik state as an enemy. In April 1918 the 8th

and 9th Russian Labour Battalions were formedfrom aliens of Russian origin living in the UK. Thetwo battalions were separated, one based inKent, the other in south Wales, apparently incase they came together and began spreadingrevolution. Sam Wernick was called up forservice into the 9th Battalion on 27 September1918, just six weeks before the end of the war,when he was a little more than 29 years old. Hewas discharged on 22 November 1918.

It is said that Sam learned butchery during hisservice but it was so short that it seems morelikely that he had already picked up the trade

8



During the late 1920s Sam Wernickmade his living fromdealing in poultry.Judging from thisphotograph, taking

hens back to Londonfrom the middle

of Wales must havebeen a slow,

uncomfortable andprecarious business.

Waterloo Road,Wolverhampton,where Sam Wernickfounded the businessthat became theWernick Group.

internment until Germany invaded Russia andRussia joined the Allies. Instead, he was sent to afactory making Wellington bombers inPontypridd in Wales until he was released tocome back and help out at Waterloo Road afterSam had seriously injured his hand in an accidentin the workshop.

Nat too was a keen sportsman. As a ballboy atthe local tennis tournament in the summer of1934, he was able to get the autograph of thatyear’s winner of the Wimbledon men’s singlestitle, Fred Perry, the last Briton to win the titleuntil Andy Murray in 2013. Nat won a place tostudy economics at University College, Hull, thenan external college of the University of London.He also won the valuable scholarship that wouldhave enabled him to take up his place. Butevents conspired against him. As a member ofthe Territorial Army, he was called up on thedeclaration of war in September 1939. Sent toFrance with the British Expeditionary Force, andemployed as an interpreter – he was adept atlanguages – he was amongst the men evacuatedfrom Dunkirk, wading out to the small boatswaist deep in water, striving to keep his preciouscigarettes dry. Committing the sin of returning tocamp a day late from leave, which lost him hiscommission, he was sent to the Middle East,where he was wounded. He saw action inGreece where, following the arrival of theGermans, he left on a raft with two colleagues,both of whom perished before he was picked up.An artillery gunner, he went back to France on D-Day but ended his active service in the City ofLondon, where he used his skills to bring downthe V1 flying bombs and V2 rockets whichbrought fear and distress to the capital duringthe final months of the war. Nat married his wifeHetty while on leave during the war, and neverdid take up his place at university.

At the liberation of Brussels in 1944, Nat had metup with his brother Joe, an officer in the RoyalEngineers. Like Solly, Joe had left school at 16since he was expected to find a job to bringmuch-needed money into the Wernick

household. He found employment in theresearch laboratory of Tubes Ltd (later part of theTI Group). He showed promise, becominginterested in metallurgy, and was given theopportunity to study part-time for a degree atthe Wolverhampton and Staffordshire TechnicalCollege (now the University of Wolverhampton).He won the silver medal for the best student inhis age group in the country. When war brokeout, he was in a reserved occupation, but he wasdetermined to join up. He served in Europe afterD-Day, ending up in the German city of Hanover,where he too acted as an interpreter. In themeantime, he had married his sweetheart Eileenin 1942. Tubes Ltd kept his job open for him but

11


insured workers. Many families experienced long periods of extreme poverty in an erawithout the safety nets brought by the post-warBeveridge settlement.

Sam Wernick just about kept the business afloat.As Lionel remembered, the family was ‘totallyimpoverished’. Every year his birthday presentwas a new shirt. His sister regularly pawned theSabbath candlesticks during the week to raisemoney for food, reclaiming them in time for thenext Sabbath. Although food was often scarce,Bertha was a resourceful woman as well as agood cook, and her children rarely went without

anything to eat. And theWernick household was also alively one. For Eileen Wernick,who later married Sam’s sonJoe, the bright, vibrant, openand friendly Wernick familywas a complete contrast withher own rather more strait-laced home life. The WaterlooRoad house was only a fewhundred yards fromWolverhampton Wanderers’ground and the boys fell in lovewith football. In later years thefirm’s vans and lorries boasteda livery of the Wolves coloursof gold and black. On the otherhand, Lionel could alsoremember listening at the ageof six or seven to his brothers

and sisters debating whether Ravel’s Bolero wasanything more than mere rhythm. This eclecticrange of interests was perhaps in line with whatSam told his children, that ‘in any activity yourely on your fellow man, and you will onlysucceed by understanding the values of yourfellow man’.

Sam was also resourceful. When the familymoved from Prestwood Road, Sam brought toWaterloo Road a couple of doors from the oldhouse. In the back garden of Waterloo Road heturned them into his first poultry shed. He also

bought the eight feet by three feet boxes used toimport cheap Polish eggs, taking out the nailsand using the timber to make more sheds. Theboxes, stuffed with straw, often smelled stronglyof rotten eggs, but sometimes a precious goodegg was found. By 1933, Sam was confidentenough to put up a hoarding at the front of thehouse that declared, ‘Sheds For Sale – EnquireWithin’. This has always been seen as thebeginning of the business that became today’sWernick Group. But the business had a difficultstart, and there were often weeks when not asingle shed was sold, leaving the family to live onlittle more than fresh air.

By 1936 Sam Wernick’s was one of ninebusinesses listed in the Staffordshire CountyDirectory as makers of portable buildings. LionelWernick remembered his father sending off forcatalogues from all the major shedmanufacturers, cutting out the pictures and,puffing away on his pipe at the kitchen table,mixing flour and water together to paste theminto his own home-made catalogue, carefullywriting down his own descriptions and prices.

Sam and Bertha were strong believers ineducation, wanting their boys to have what theyhad been denied. They encouraged them to stayon at school and aspire to further education, butin the end only one of them, Lionel, would leaveschool for university. All four boys won places toWolverhampton Grammar School. Solly, aschoolboy boxing and snooker champion, had anunconventional streak, and developed a love ofgambling, at which he would later be verysuccessful. Very bright, he was often suggestingbetter ways of doing things to his father, whowould usually respond, ‘Listen, Solly, don’t youcome here with your gambling ways!’ Timeswere too hard for Solly to have any other choicethan help out his father in the business. Whenthe Second World War broke out, Solly wasineligible to serve in the armed forces since hehad never become a British citizen. Born inPoland when it was part of Russia, Solly was intheory an enemy alien, in constant threat of

10


Top - Nat Wernick(centre back) with hisfellow soldiers in theEgyptian desert withthe 8th Army in 1942.

Nat Wernick on thefar right with friendsin Israel in the late1940s.

Bertha Wernick, wife of Sam.

There was no sudden return to nationalprosperity after the war. In achieving victory, thecountry had crippled itself financially. Thepervading sense of exhaustion was exemplifiedby the nation’s inability to produce enoughpower to meet demand, resulting in severalmonths of power cuts. These were aggravatedby the miserable winter of 1947, the worst inliving memory, as already struggling powerstations became snowbound. Many wartimecontrols, including rationing, lasted well into the1950s while others, such as bread rationing,were introduced for the first time. Sweets wererationed until 1953 and meat until 1954. Thestate maintained control over repairs andmaintenance until 1948 and new building workuntil 1954. Basic materials, such as timber andsteel, which were rationed, and bricks, whichwere not, were in short supply. Productivity waslow, standards having fallen through the wartimedilution of labour, whilst skilled men returningfrom active service were in need of retraining.

Sam’s boys all came back to work in thebusiness. Max returned in 1946 and Nat and Joein 1947. The desperate state of the Britisheconomy did not discourage Sam, ever theoptimist, who was so pleased with the progressof the business and so convinced of its futurethat he turned it into a limited company in theautumn of 1946. Eileen Wernick recalled the firstsale of sheds in the yard at Waterloo Road afterthe war, which was so successful that Berthawondered why one should not be held everyweekend. Eileen would work alongside PatNiemen for some years, helping with thegrowing volume of paperwork.

Sam was eager to keep the next generationinvolved and Solly, Nat, Joe and Max, who had alltaken up shares in the business, were appointedhis fellow directors. The same offer had beenmade to Sam’s other sons-in-law but theypreferred to concentrate on their own careers.The first meeting of S Wernick & Sons Ltd washeld on 17 September 1946 at the offices of thecompany’s solicitors, Quadrant Chambers, inPrinces Square, Wolverhampton.

The first annual general meeting took place at127 Waterloo Road in the summer of 1947. Incontrast to the freezing winter, the summer wasdry and hot, the third warmest on record. Sam,who took the title of general manager, was busyallocating responsibilities. With his accumulatedexperience, Solly was put in charge of makingportable buildings. Sam asked Max to help himwith the trailers that were still being built, and healso hoped it might be possible to makecaravans. Sales and deliveries were allocated toJoe but he was still in the army, and until hisreturn later in the year, Solly and Max took careof them. Nat, however, was leaving the companyto move to London, partly because his wifewanted to live there, and partly because thebusiness was not yet big enough to support all ofthem. Sam wanted to keep open the possibilityof his return to the business, and as a result Nat was given the agency for the company’sproducts in London.

The company pottered along for a few years.Eileen Wernick remembered that even in the late1940s the family was not well off. The wholefamily could afford to run only one car, each

13

A family concern 1947-1971

on demobilisation Joe told his employers hewanted to join his father. Utterly meticulous,courteous and honourable, he was held in suchhigh regard within the company that Tubes toldhim his post would remain available for him foranother year in case he changed his mind.

Sam gained a son-in-law during the war. Hisdaughter Pat, who was living in the East End,sang in a local Gilbert and Sullivan society, whereshe met Max Niemen, who had been working asa hairdresser. During the dark days of the Blitz,Max and Pat moved to Wolverhampton, whereMax took a job as a foreman at the local batteryfactory. He was later called up, and served withthe army in India and Burma. Pat acted as herfather’s secretary, a role she continued after the war.

While his three eldest sons were away (Lionelwas still at school), Sam found that his businessbegan to prosper after the trying times of the

1930s. Like so many other manufacturers, hebegan carrying out work for the government. Asfood became scarce and rationing wasintroduced, posters everywhere were urgingpeople to ‘Dig For Victory!’ and Sam tapped intoa growing demand for garden sheds and poultryhouses. Many materials were in short supplyand the need to make the most of whatever wasavailable led Sam to develop another profitablesideline. Ever inventive, he began building smalltrailers for his farming customers. These werebased on the front axles of old cars recoveredfrom a local scrapyard, whose moving wheels hefixed with shackles forged by his friendlyneighbourhood blacksmith at a smithy in nearbyRed Cross Street, a part of Wolverhampton longsince lost through redevelopment. Made out oftimber, the trailer bodies were varnished andsold for eight pounds each. As Eileen Wernickrecalled, by 1945 the business was ‘hoppingalong’. The years of hardship seemed to bepaying off.


Sam Wernick leansagainst the entranceto his trade stand atan agricultural show

in the late 1940s.


on Charity Farm Chase, not far from the railwayline. It was enough to get started. Nat recruitedthe first four employees, put in a circular sawand began making sheds in August 1952. Latertwo more sites would be acquired, although theywould be separated by the road, necessitating agreat deal of manhandling of timber and goodsfrom one side to the other.

A turning point for the Billericay factory cameout from an unexpected event. At the end ofJanuary 1953 the east coast of England wasdevastated by the worst natural disaster to hitthe country in the twentieth century. A stormsurge brought major flooding to areas of Essex,Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent and the Thames estuary,causing 307 deaths, the evacuation of 30,000people and damage to 24,000 homes. Theimpact was even more destructive across theNorth Sea in the Netherlands, where more than1,800 people were killed.

Amongst the damage caused by the flooding was the destruction of countless beach huts,including those on the beach at Frinton, theseaside resort between Clacton and Felixstowe.The company was contacted by a local estateagent, Mr Downes, who asked them to supplyreplacements, not only at Frinton but at otherseaside towns along the ravaged Essex coast. It was more than Nat could cope with on hisown, and his brother-in-law Max came down to help him.

In September 1953 Nat was also joined by hisyoungest brother. Lionel had graduated inchemistry from King’s College, London, and hadbegun studying for a doctorate, which wasinterrupted by national service. A talentedlinguist, like his other brothers, he spent his timeserving as a regional liaison officer in Germany.When he left the army, he gave up his researchto come into the family business, and joined Natand Max in Billericay. He became a director inOctober 1953.

Another fillip that helped to establish the

Billericay factory in its early years cameindirectly from the move towards independencein Malaya. From 1948 onwards, communistrebels had been attacking Malayan rubberplantations, often killing their Europeanmanagers. This boosted the campaign forMalayan independence and many managers,foreseeing the curtailment of their own careers,began to leave the country. Those coming backto the UK were looking to invest in anotherbusiness and as coincidence would have it, theyfound their opportunity in the beginnings of theUK broiler chicken trade.

Poultry production in Britain had always beenregarded as a secondary activity on most farms.Some soldiers returning from the First World Warhad invested in poultry farming but it remainedon a small scale and most people saw chicken asa delicacy for special occasions, such asChristmas or Easter. This changed in the early1950s when a bird grown for its meat alone wasintroduced from the US. These birds were called‘broilers’ since their tender meat was producedwithout the need for lengthy roasting. At thesame time the rationing of poultry feed came toan end, which madelarger flock sizespossible. This newera in poultrybreeding, whichwould transformchicken from aluxury into aneveryday food, waspromoted along theeast coast by BirdsEye, the foodprocessing companythat had been part ofUnilever since 1930.

The opportunity wasobvious to NatWernick in Billericay,and the potentialwas confirmed by

15


branch of the family taking turns to share it,firstly once a month, then later once a fortnight.Even so, by 1950, the family as keen football fans felt able to present the Wernick Cup to the Walsall and District Football League, which would eventually become the League’smajor competition.

Joe was a born salesman, and his work indeveloping a spreading network of agents forselling sheds across the country was the key tothe growing success of the business as theeconomy picked up during the 1950s. Lionel wasstill in the sixth form when he went out on theroad with Joe for the first time, calling on smallbusinesses, such as garden centres, and offeringthem sheds for display.

As enquiries came in from further afield, thecompany began considering setting up anotherfactory for making sheds in the south. AlthoughWaterloo Road was becoming cramped, findinga new site in Wolverhampton would not solvethe problem of delivering bulky sheds over

longer distances. The roads were simply not upto it. In 1953 they were described as full of‘bottlenecks, sharp turns, blind bends,inadequate sight lines, narrow and often hump-backed bridges, low bridges, congested built-upareas and a carriageway for the most part onlywide enough for one line of traffic in eachdirection’. The start of a modern road networkwould not begin until the opening of the Prestonbypass in December 1958, the first section ofmotorway in the country. The first stretch of theM1 was opened between Rugby and London inNovember 1959. Even so, by 1963, only 194miles of motorway had been created andjourney times remained slow, hindered by longstretches of unimproved highways.

The family discussed the idea, and agreed to tryand find a suitable site. This was an ideal task forNat, who was welcomed back into the companyand joined the board in January 1952. Aftersome searching, he found a huge tract of land inBillericay in Essex, and the company bought aplot containing a shed along an unmade-up road

14


Mail order was an important source of sales and many

people had a Wernick shed in

their back garden.

The Wernick deep litter house was first introduced inthe 1950s, whendozens were erectedalong the east coast,and remained a staple product formany years.

maths, geography, map reading and woodwork.Lionel always believed that ‘all the people takenon became part of the Wernick family’.

A number of these young boys would spend theirentire working lives with the company, ending upas respected senior managers and directors.Brian Humphreys, Ray Hunt and John Cavadasca,for instance, all joined the company in 1952.Brian and John were slightly younger than Rayand came straight from leaving school. Workingat a local coach-building business, Ray wasencouraged by his friend John to join him, andafter three attempts he was taken on as anapprentice carpenter.

This was the era of National Service, when youngmen between 17 and 21 were called up to spendtwo years in the armed forces, a scheme someconscripts loved and others loathed, whichfinally came to an end in 1963. There was noneed for men to return to their original jobs butmost of those working for Wernick, includingBrian, Ray and John, returned at the end of theirservice. In 1960 Ray did leave the companybriefly, when his promotion to acting foremanwas withdrawn following the return to work ofthe incumbent after illness. His departurerankled with Lionel, who prized loyalty like all theWernick brothers, and ushered him off thepremises when he came back to see his friendJohn with the words, ‘You don’t work hereanymore!’ Within months he was back. HarryPeacock, who had just been appointed salesmanager for the South (John Wilkinson was hisopposite number in the Midlands), invited him tobecome sales representative for Essex. Ray neverlooked back, eventually becoming sales directorin the 1970s and retiring in 2001 as joint chiefexecutive alongside David Wernick.

The Billericay factory was a close-knit place in itsearly years. As Ray’s widow Edna recalled, ‘If youwent out with a Wernicks man, you too becamepart of Wernicks.’ The workforce was smallenough for everyone to know each other, and inany case most of them lived locally. Quite often

several members of the same family workedthere, such as the Turner brothers and theAmber brothers, and often across thegenerations too: for instance, Ray Hunt’s son,Raymond, joined his father for a short while, andhis grandson Nathan would become thecompany’s first graduate trainee in 2013. Otherfamily members would step in when they wereneeded. Doris Cavadasca, John’s widow,remembered being called in to cover part-timefor an employee who was ill, and her mother andaunt once came in to run the factory canteen fora couple of weeks. People always did their bestto get in to work, regardless of the weather. The1950s were years of dense, deadly, sooty fogs,which often reduced visibility to a few yardsduring the autumn and winter, but factoryworkers insisted on making their way on foot toBillericay from Laindon, an hour and a half’s walkaway, rather than stop at home. The tradition ofregular annual outings for staff and their families,which Sam Wernick had already begun inWolverhampton, was perpetuated in Billericay,where there were trips to shows and concerts inLondon’s West End. There was also the annualChristmas dinner-dance, once a fixture oncompany calendars up and down the country.The event for the Billericay factory was oftenheld at a hired hall close to Shenfield railwaystation, five miles away. For Doris Cavadasca,‘being taken out for Wernick’s Christmas dinnerwas something special. You’d spend weekssearching for the right dress and hours makingsure your hair was just right.’

The way the company looked after its staff paidoff. Edna and Doris recalled that for many staffthe company ‘was like an obsession with them.People were totally loyal to that company’. Therewere many long-serving Wernick employees,although this was an age when people changedtheir jobs far less frequently than they do today,and many businesses had long lists of long-serving employees. John Cavadasca remainedwith Wernick until his untimely death aged 60 in1998, having become a senior director in chargeof production in the south, while Ray Hunt

17


the advice given to Joe Wernick by a consultant,J C Muckleston, who had previously been anadvisor to the Ministry of Agriculture. The firm’sresponse was the Wernick Deep Litter House,some 120 feet long by nearly 40 feet wide, builtin ten-feet timber sections. Equipped with afood store, automatic feeding system and airheaters, the Deep Litter House was massproduced, transported in kit form and erectedon sites along the east coast. Lionel Wernickrecalled meeting the directors of Birds Eye, whothen placed an order for more than twenty deeplitter houses.

Don Richards, later the Wernick sales director,led a team of erectors, who supervised thecasual labour employed to put up the buildings.Labour was freely available in seaside towns outof season. Every Saturday Lionel Wernick wouldcall on each site, bringing with him not only theteam’s wage packets but also bars of chocolate.

It was also suggested to Joe Wernick that thecompany might consider setting up its ownbroiler chicken business. This was managed byNat Wernick under the name of Suffolk Broilerson a site in Suffolk where eight broiler houseswere erected. It was successful but, like Sam’strailers during the war, was only ever a sidelineand was sold several years later. Over the nextfew years several other short-lived ventureswere set up with varying degrees of success.Amongst them was Videorama, based innearby Willenhall, which for a number of yearsmade cheap cabinets for Decca radiograms.

There was no shortage of labour for theBillericay factory. Local schools provided aready supply of eager young school leaverslooking for work. Since they were only fifteenwhen they left, Lionel Wernick devised avoluntary education scheme for them onSaturday mornings, teaching the boys English,

16


Lionel Wernick was always eager

to recognise achievements by

apprentices and herehe is presenting an

award, supported byJohn Cavasdasca,

Brian Hart (who wasstill working for theGroup in 2014) andBrian Humphreys.

good men’. They turned out chicken coops,pigeon lofts, rabbit hutches and sheds by thethousand as well some larger sectional buildings.‘The quality was superb. How the hell we turnedall the work out, I don’t know, but it was first-class stuff.’

As a driver’s mate, Peter Tanner helped to deliver these goods directly to customers, oftenwith fourteen or more drops on every run. Thebottle-green livery of the lorries, which deliveredto customers free of charge across most ofEngland and Wales, was on the verge of beingchanged to the gold and black of Sam Wernick’sbeloved Wolverhampton Wanderers. As well asdelivering goods, the drivers occasionallybrought back goods that had not been paid for.Peter Tanner was once sent to retrieve a pigeonloft, first having to take out all the pigeons, someof them flying after the lorry all the way back to Waterloo Road.

Sam, remembered Peter, was ‘a little man oftenwith a big cigar in his mouth’. In his prime he wasreckoned to have been immensely strong,capable of holding up a truck for a jack to beplaced underneath it. It was said that he wouldstop everyone in the yard at half-past three everyafternoon and make them pick up and straightenout any bent nails, a thrifty habit inculcated bylong years of struggle and counting every penny.

Peter Tanner, like Ray Hunt, also spent time awayfrom home putting up Wernick buildings, thistime home extensions, garages and sheds intowns like Blackpool. He later led a team oferectors putting up larger buildings for thecompany as a self-employed sub-contractor. Theconditions could sometimes be atrocious, withweather so cold that it froze the glue used tohold the buildings together. During the bitterwinter of 1962-63, when Peter was helping toerect chalets at a holiday camp in GreatYarmouth, the sea froze over. He rememberedhow the wind got up, blowing down the gable ofa chalet he was working on, which didn’t crushhim only because in an instant he had droppeddown below the level of the brick piers intendedto support the floor.

The new Midlands factory was at Lindon Road,Brownhills, about ten miles east ofWolverhampton. Opened in 1956, it was on aspacious one-acre plot with good access, camewith an efficient layout, and was equipped with

19


retired as joint chief executive on the verge of 50years’ service in 2001. It was a time whenpeople made their own enjoyment, either ineach other’s company or with their workcolleagues. Cinema-going was still common,there were only two channels on television (andnot everyone owned one), and people did nothave the distractions of Xboxes or smartphones.It was the close-knit camaraderie of theworkplace that helped annual outings anddinner-dances retain their popularity for so long.The personal interest that Nat, Joe, Lionel andMax took in their staff rubbed off, with staff asthey became more senior taking an equalinterest in those they managed.

Ray Hunt recollected in 2002 that when thecompany finally decided to take him on, ‘wewere still producing greenhouses, sheds and

chicken sheds. There were only six peopleworking at Billericay – I never thought it wouldlast or grow to the size it has today’. But thefactory grew steadily as Nat followed Joe’sexample by seeking out more agents. The most important was the major London departmentstore, Gamages Ltd, established in 1878 andbased in Holborn. Once a week Wernick’s own lorries delivered sheds ordered throughGamages to customers in and around London.For a brief period at the end of the 1950s thecompany even opened a small office at 64-66Oxford Street to serve its London agents.

Poultry sheds remained a staple product for theBillericay factory. Ray Hunt spent part of his timehelping to put up these sheds along the east andsouth coasts. At a time when Ray and Edna weresaving up to get married, this was one way ofearning some precious overtime. In December1958 Ray and his team had finished erectingsheds near Margate on the most easterly tip ofthe Kentish coast. Finishing work, they took theirwell-earned wages to spend at the local fair,turning up later that evening outside Edna’shome in their bottle-green Wernick van topresent her with the prize that had cost themmost of their wages – an unusual pair of chinabookends in the shape of black elephants!

By the late 1950s Wernick had opened anotherfactory in the Midlands. Waterloo Road, just onethird of an acre in a residential area, withrestricted access, making timber deliveriesdifficult, creating an inefficient layout andexcessive handling, had never really been asuitable site. Peter Tanner, who began workingthere in 1959, remembered how half a dozentimber lorries queued up outside the yard everyMonday morning, each waiting in turn as themen laboriously unloaded every piece of timberby hand. The place was also riddled with rats.Jack Woodward was the unofficial rat-catcher,putting down several cage traps every night anddrowning the captured rats the next morning.Waterloo Road employed about 30 men, ‘allgood bench hands,’ Peter Tanner recalled, ‘all

18


The pig says, 'I like Wernick

Houses, they are socomfortable'. An ingenious

marketing approachby Wernicks to

farmers, a majorsource of sales for

many years.

The huge variety ofsectional buildingsoffered by Wernickincluded a range of pigeon lofts for pigeon fanciers.

The cafeteria built by Wernicks forCleethorpes Zoo andMarineland.

government departments, the armed forces andlocal councils. There were also major businessessuch as Birds Eye, Lotus, Sir Alfred MacAlpineand ICI, for whom it was designing larger timbersectional buildings, such as canteens, classroomsand site offices. These were the precursors of themodular buildings the company would developmuch later. The poultry business remainedstrong and other agricultural products had beenadded, including a range of pig houses, designedonce again in conjunction with J C Muckleston.

With the growth in turnover after the opening ofBrownhills, Sam and his sons decided the timehad come to appoint an outsider to cast an eyeover the company’s performance. Every yearhigher sales targets were set and every year theywere outstripped. The company was appointingmore and more agents in England and Wales,complemented by advertising in the nationalpress, including the Radio Times.

The consultants brought in by the company,Urwick Orr & Partners, pointed out that Wernickhad more than 70 standard designs in a range ofsizes, creating more than 400 different products.Since the company was determined to keepdelivery charges to a minimum, each factory hadto make a comprehensive range of buildings,with a few exceptions, for instance, all broilerhouses were made inBillericay and allclassrooms and officeunits were still made inWaterloo Road. Windowsashes, window frames,doors and door frameswere bought in. Inaddition, the report wenton, ‘Your policy is toaccept orders for modifiedstandard buildings and toquote for specialbuildings, such as schoolclassrooms, huts to thespecification of largebuilding contractors, and

ranges of buildings for other organisations.’ Ananalysis of orders received over three monthsfrom across the North recorded 700 popularsheds, 110 workshops, 300 garages, 70 chalets,280 greenhouses, 48 garden frames, 50 coalbunkers, 15 allotment huts, 83 pigeon lofts, 77conservatories, 79 cedar sheds, 36 poultry

21


up-to-date saws and planers. There were spoilheaps from the mines behind the site, and SamWernick would tip the lorry drivers taking thespoil away ten shillings to dump a load at thefactory, using it to lay down the roadways allaround the factory. Solly was placed in charge,moving from Waterloo Road, which remainedopen until the mid-1960s.

By the late 1950s, the company’s sales exceeded£200,000, thanks largely to Billericay. They wereboosted by the new Brownhills factory, reachingnearly £700,000 in 1960. By then 41 men wereemployed at Waterloo Road, 78 at Billericay and90 at Brownhills. This was a time when, asHarold MacMillan, the prime minister, remarkedin 1957, ‘You will see a state of prosperity suchas we have never had in my lifetime – norindeed in the history of this country. Indeed, letus be frank about it, most of our people havenever had it so good.’ Wartime controls were at

last a thing of the past and interest rates werelow, unleashing pent-up demand from whichshareholders, executives and workers alike all benefited.

The catalogue for 1958 illustrated the company’sprogress since the war. It boasted that ‘Byconcentrating on mass production of a fewpopular sizes, we are now able to offer a quality-built shed of the utmost strength’. The shedscame with a 25-year guarantee. The range wasextensive: sheds, workshops and garages,greenhouses, poultry houses and kennels,aviaries and pigeon lofts, chalets, conservatoriesand pavilions, coal bunkers, garden frames andfencing. The sheds, workshops and garages hadnames like the Popular, the Wulfrun and theSuperb, the Supreme, the Epping and the Royal,the Forge, the Enville and the Stormguard. Thecompany sold not only to the general public, buthad a number of bigger customers, including

20


Typical productsmade by the

company feature onthe cover of this1958 catalogue.

As motoring became more andmore affordable in

the 1950s, everyonewanted their own garage.

Sam Wernick in fullvoice at a familygathering in theearly 1960s.

Wernick chalets werea popular product formany years at homeand abroad.

liked Solly, often seen, like his father, with a largecigar in his mouth. But Solly’s heart was never inthe business, even though he had played a full part in its development. The love of gambling hehad developed in his youth, stemming from hisfondness for boxing and horse-racing, was stillsomething he wished to pursue professionally.His chance came in the early 1960s when thegambling laws were liberalised, beginning withthe Betting and Gaming Act 1960 and continuingwith the Gaming Act 1968. Solly successfullyapplied for a gaming licence and he openedWolverhampton’s first casino at the top of theQueen Victoria Hotel. This was the prelude to hisdeparture from the family business. Solly turnedto his brother Nat as they left a board meetingand told him he had had enough. ‘OK,’ said Nat,‘I’ll take that as your resignation.’ On 26 July1967 Solly sold his shares to his brothers.

Solly invited his brothers to join him in one of thecasinos he operated. They were open-mouthedto see how much money was pouring in, butthey also knew that running a gamblingoperation was a precarious occupation. Theytried, without success, to persuade Solly to bring

the casinos within the wider family business.Being the oldest of the siblings, and having a very strong and independent personality, heviewed the possibility of his younger brothersbeing able to interfere in the running of hisbusiness with great suspicion. Solly died inWolverhampton in 1990.

Nat took over from Solly as chairman but neverfelt comfortable in the role, which also causedsome aggravation with his brothers. In 1971 hisproposal that the chairmanship should rotateamongst the brothers was accepted. LionelWernick’s comment at the time, recorded in theboard minutes, that ‘the most important matterwas the internal goodwill and trust betweendirectors’ reflected the inevitable tensionbetween the brothers. It also underlined theirdetermination to run the business as much aspossible by consensus. At the same time as therole of chairman changed, the brothers alsoagreed to create two separate positions ofmanaging director, one for the Midlands (JoeWernick), the other for the South (LionelWernick), which also confirmed the way thebusiness had been run as two halves for manyyears. (Nat took the title of group financedirector while Max became company secretary.)The brothers met together regularly andalthough, as Lionel recalled, there were plenty ofarguments, they were close to each other andusually reached agreement. The minutes for aboard meeting in October 1969 contained thehope that any development introduced either inthe Midlands or in the South would be agreed byall the directors. ‘We all worked together,’stressed Lionel. On the other hand, if thebrothers failed to agree with each other, it oftenmade little difference, since each of them justdid their own thing anyway. Board meetingswere usually held every month, alternating fromthe late 1960s between Brownhills, Billericay andThe Bull in Stony Stratford, regarded as a halfwaypoint between Brownhills and Billericay. (The Bullwas one of two coaching inns in Stony Stratford,the other being The Cock, which, it is alleged,gave rise to the phrase ‘cock and bull stories’,

23


crates, 22 nest boxes, 21 perch assemblies and eight dog kennels. The weekly output of eachfactory was valued respectively at £7,000 forBillericay, £5,500 for Brownhills and £2,600 forWaterloo Road. At Billericay Nat had set up asmall planning and estimating department whilein Wolverhampton a subsidiary called DaintySmith managed by Solly’s eldest son, Peter,made a range of timber greenhouses. Under itsown name, the company also sold steel-framedgreenhouses, concrete bunkers and workbenches supplied by other manufacturers.

The business, noted the consultants, was run intwo halves: in the Midlands, Max looked afterWaterloo Road and Solly the Brownhills factory,while Joe was responsible for all sales in thenorth Midlands, the north of England andScotland. In the South, Lionel managed theBillericay factory, with Nat in charge of sales inthe south Midlands and the south of England.The consultants were impressed by thecompany’s rate of expansion and the effectiveness of the simple proceduresemployed in the works and offices, but believedthat better management information, includingmonthly trading accounts, was needed for acompany of its size. At the time the only

financial information used by the company camefrom the annual accounts.

The family paid heed to the report. WaterlooRoad was earmarked for closure, although thiswould not happen until 1968. And in 1962preference shares were offered to the Industrialand Commercial Finance Corporation (ICFC). Thisraised £30,000, more than half of which wasapplied to expanding the Brownhills andBillericay factories, with the remainder investedin new plant, new lorries and additional workingcapital. ICFC had been formed in 1945 by theBank of England and the major banks to fill a gapin the market by offering long-term funding forsmall and medium-sized manufacturingbusinesses. Although ICFC only began raisingexternal funds for investment in 1959, it rapidlybecame the largest provider of outside capitalfor unquoted companies in the UK. It wouldremain a Wernick shareholder until 2005, bywhich time it was known as 3i.

By 1962 Sam, who had lost his wife Bertha in1955, had retired. After a lifetime of hard workhe died at the age of 78 on 28 July 1967. He hadstepped down as chairman in 1957, when hewas succeeded by his eldest son Solly. Everyone

22


Nat Wernick (far right) and PatNieman (looking

towards the camera)and Ray Hunt

(second from left) on a works outing in

the early 1960s.

Solly, Sam's eldestson, with his wife Dolly.

first one in the UK had opened at Longleat in1966. Three years later the second was opened,the brainchild of Billy Smart Junior, who hadtaken over the family circus founded by his fatherin 1946. Billy Smart’s Circus was still touring thecountry, its big top capable of holding sixthousand spectators. Billy Smart Junior lived at St Leonard’s Hill, Windsor, a sprawling Victorianhouse known after a previous owner as DodgeMansion, and opened Windsor Safari Park in theextensive grounds in 1969. The Billericay factorymade buildings for housing some of the animalsand ancillary accommodation. Ray Hunt, recalledEdna, visited the site so regularly that the rest ofhis family, for whom the excitement of theoriginal excursion had palled, refused to go withhim anymore. Ray dealt principally with Billy’sbrother Ronnie, who was often ringing him athome and asking him to come out to the park.The park was formally opened by PrincessMargaret, with her son Viscount Linley, on 31March 1970, and Ray and Edna Hunt, along with Lionel Wernick and his wife Faye, wereamong the guests. Ronnie Smart continued tostay in touch with Ray even after Ray’sretirement from Wernick.

Brownhills was expanding steadily. In 1968 thefactory absorbed staff transferred from WaterlooRoad after its long-delayed closure. Brownhills,recollected Garry Sylvester, was a very friendlyplace, with a good mix of men. In 1969 Garrybecame the first apprentice to be taken on at thefactory and was still working for the company asa contracts manager in 2013. His father BillSylvester was manager of the timber mill, one ofthree ‘Bills’ running the factory, the others beingfactory manager Bill Bates and deputy managerBill Reynolds. Several other staff who joinedBrownhills around the same time are also stillworking for the company. One was Garry’scolleague Alan Hollyoak who joined in 1973.Another was Sylvia Harper, who joined thecompany from school in 1966. She began as ajunior invoice clerk and receptionist on a weeklywage of £4 10s 6d; she would eventually becomeone of the company’s senior divisional managers.

By the late 1960s the Brownhills factory wasmaking more and more ‘Relocatables’ or ‘RLs’, asthey were known, early mobile accommodationunits. Alan Hollyoak remembered that each manwould make a complete shed from start to finish,although windows and doors were still suppliedby an external manufacturer. The factory wasalso making fencing panels, greenhouses, gardensheds, garages and pig-houses, mostly sold todomestic customers. Amongst the factory’sbusiness customers was a woman who ran herown poultry farm, and every year supplied SylviaHarper and her friend Carol Howdle withchickens for Christmas. In 1970 the factorylaunched the Fast-Lock range of panel buildings,mainly for accommodation on building sites,taking its name from the system used to bolt allthe sections together. There was also the Key-Pack range of collapsible flat-pack buildings,mainly used for export, and a superior panelbuilding known as the WS68, made for use as atemporary classroom, a sector proving quitesuccessful for the company.

There was some attempt at coordinatingproduction between the two factories. In 1970the brothers agreed that site hutting and beachhuts would be produced at Billericay, whileBrownhills would make all domestic sheds,mobile units and home extensions. Bothfactories would produce modular buildings(distinct from mobile units in that modularbuildings were fixed), chalets, latrines andindividually designed bespoke buildings. Thisarrangement was revised again in 1971, when itwas agreed that Billericay would make all majorsystem buildings, with Brownhills responsible forsite hutting, chalets, agricultural buildings,domestic buildings and the Fast-Lock range. NatWernick had also set up a costings department,and the accounts functions for both factories hadbeen merged into one office in Billericay HighStreet. By now the company had been formallystructured into Wernick Midlands and WernickSouth. The erection of the company’s buildingson site was now incorporated within a newconstruction division.

25


arising from the increasingly fanciful talesexchanged between increasingly inebriatedgroups of travellers making an overnight stop in the town.)

The 1960s was a time of mixed fortunes for theBritish economy. In 1964, after thirteen years ofConservative rule, the electorate returned aLabour government under Harold Wilson. In1963 he had confidently predicted the country’stechnological advance, promising that ‘theBritain that is going to be forged in the whiteheat of this revolution will be no place forrestrictive practices or outdated methods’. Hewas hopelessly optimistic. Hisnew government found thatthe stop-go economic policiescommon since the mid-1950s,when governmentsmanipulated interest ratesand the flow of credit to heatup and cool down theeconomy, had left the biggesttrade deficit since the war.Sterling was regularly underpressure on the foreignexchange rates and in 1967the currency’s position was soweak that the pound wasdevalued against the dollar byfifteen per cent.

Even so, despite thegovernment stumbling fromone crisis to another,economic growth in the UKaveraged around three percent per annum. Manybusinesses – and Wernick wasamongst them – benefitedfrom increased investment bynational and local governmentin health, education andtransport. By the early 1970slocal government had becomea staple customer of theBillericay factory. During 1973-

74, for example, the factory’s orders included a community hall on Canvey Island, temporaryhousing for several other Essex councils,classroom units for Brent Borough Council and Kent County Council, and a supply of garden sheds for the Borough of Brighton. There was work for other government sectorstoo, such as an extension of Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham.

But there was plenty of work from the privatesector too. Edna Hunt remembered how at theend of the 1960s the company won the contractto supply buildings for a new safari park. The

24


Local authorities became a fruitful

source of contractsin the 1960s.

Businesses faced a difficult economic situationduring the 1970s. The boom engineered by TedHeath’s Conservative government, coupled withthe hike in oil prices in 1973-74, created soaringinflation. Peaking at 25 per cent per annum in1975, it averaged thirteen per cent per annumduring the decade. To conserve energy, a three-day working week was introduced in December1973. Early in the following year the powershortage was aggravated by the second nationalminers’ strike in three years, leading to a snapgeneral election that returned the Labour partyto office. The new government tried with littlesuccess to mitigate the worst effects of high

inflation through complex legislation whichattempted to control pay and prices. Widespreadlabour unrest and political uncertaintyculminated in the so-called Winter of Discontentin 1979 which played a major role in the electionof the Conservative government under MrsThatcher that May. Economic growth during thesecond half of the 1970s was half the rateachieved in the 1960s.

Ironically, it was the surge in oil prices thathelped exports become an important part of theWernick business during 1970s and early 1980s.The export campaign was spearheaded by Nat

27

Exports and hire 1971-1995

As the 1960s came to an end, a member of thethird generation of the family was justbeginning to take an interest in the business.David Wernick, Lionel’s young son, started inthe business at the age of eleven during hisschool holidays. As a junior storeman in theBillericay factory, his first job was sorting outthousands of bolts, a task he accomplished sowell that Sid Ruffles, the senior storeman, toldhis father that David would make a wonderfulstoreman. David also helped to make floors,roofs and wall panels for site hutting, working

on a bench in the factory alongside BrianSampson, who trained all the young starters.Later he became a driver’s mate alongsideRobbie Dodd and Les Freeman. His onlycomplaint was that he was being paid too little,which led him one summer to add a year ontohis age to get a job at a higher rate of pay atthe local garage. But the monotony ofremoving the protective grease from newlydelivered cars soon put paid to that, and hewent back to the factory. He would never seekemployment anywhere else again.

26


The domestic market for sheds was still strong in

the late 1960s.

By the late 1960s,Wernick had moved

a long way from just making small

timber sheds.


This development(Marconi Radar Systems Centre in Writtle Road,Chelmsford) highlights the growing scale of thecompany's projectsby the 1970s.

an exhibition in Jordan. There were evenproposals to establish a joinery factory inJordan to support the company’s export driveand bring down costs but this was regarded asone step too far by a majority of the directors.

Wernick supplied mainly units for housingconstruction site labourers. In 1978 the companyadded specially designed accommodation unitsto its range of collapsible or ‘knock down’ Flat-Pakunits, packed flat for export and easy erection onsite. The basic unit was intended to house up tofour men in two bedrooms plus a toilet-cum-shower room. These were high-quality modularbuildings, which could be used independently orlinked to create larger complexes. Each unit wasalready decorated in its flat-pack form, and tookno more than five hours to assemble, usingunskilled labour under minimal supervision, allkeeping costs down. The first order for thisparticular range, which was also fitted with airconditioning, was 70 units despatched withinseven weeks for a camp set up by Costain ProcessEngineering Construction in Qatar. Similar orderswere also received for projects undertaken in the

Sudan and Nigeria. They were not all foraccommodation: in 1982 the company won anorder worth £250,000 to supply 40 units to formschool laboratories in Libya.

The company’s largest single export order camein 1977, largely through the efforts of NatWernick. This was a contract worth £2.5 millionto supply and erect units to create the library forthe University of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. But itwas also the order that gave the company themost headaches. First, there were problems withthe signed contract, which was in Arabic. Thenthe original site was changed, resulting inextensive and costly foundation works on thenew site, creating a substantial loss on the overallcontract. The agent appointed by the companysiphoned funds into his own account, a significantloss which was written off over several years. And the working environment was an alien onefor workers sent out from Essex: two rooferswere forced one Friday to witness a publicexecution, an experience that shook them up somuch that they took the first flight home andrefused to return.

29


Wernick. There were two obviousmarkets. The first was the nearest,the Continental market across theChannel, where business was muchsimpler following the UK’s entry intothe European Economic Community,as the EU was then called, in 1973.In the autumn of 1976 Nat beganinvestigating the possibility ofsupplying garden sheds to gardencentres in France and Germany. Anagent was also appointed inBelgium, and premises were leasedin Brussels, where sheds and chaletswent on display. The chalets provedremarkably popular, with manybeing supplied for holiday use in theArdennes. Lionel would fly regularlyfrom Southend to Ostend to spendthe day in Brussels on business.Travel, even air travel, was muchless complex then. On one occasion,behind schedule as he arrived atOstend, Lionel took the chance ofscaling the perimeter fence,avoiding customs formalitiesentirely, and dashing along therunway to join the rest of thepassengers as they boarded the flight. Wernickchalets also had customers in Switzerland, with

different loading standards for the roof,depending on the weight of snow and how farup the mountainside each chalet was located. Garden sheds seemed popular inGermany, one load a week being regularlydespatched to the Continent from the Billericay factory.

The second obvious market was the Middle East,where countries were awash with moneyfollowing the steep rise in oil prices. Theinternational arms of major UK constructioncompanies were already active in infrastructureprojects in the area. Nat began looking into themarket towards the end of 1975 and by early1976 had won several orders for flat-pack unitsfor UK construction companies. By the beginningof 1977 export activity had become ‘very brisk’,and the company was displaying its products at

28


Wernick built a flourishing export

business, supplyingaccommodation

units for expatriateworkers employed on major Middle

East infrastructureprojects.

Wernick exportedmany chalets tothe Continent in

the 1980s.

Public authoritieshave always beenmajor customers of the group. This building wassupplied for use as a police station in Kilburn, North London.

personalities were working together, sometimesmade coordination difficult. In 1976, for instance,it turned out that while Billericay was sellingsheds direct to the public, Brownhills was sellingthe same sheds wholesale to local agents whowere competing directly with the Billericayfactory. It also made forward planning difficult. In1975, for the first time, the brothers hadappointed non-family members – Harry Peacock,Ray Hunt, Brian Humphreys, Don Richards, BillWilkinson and Bill Reynolds – as directors ofSamuel Wernick & Sons Ltd, and simultaneouslycreated local management teams. It was thelocal southern directors who pointedly queried in1976 whether the company had any long-termplan. This intervention may have led to theappointment of Peacock, Hunt and Richards asthe first non-family group directors in 1977.Coordination took another step forward duringthis period with the introduction of commonadvertising and promotional material. On theother hand, encouraging a group-wide approachwas hindered by denying directors andmanagement teams outside the group board access to group results, and confining them toresults for their own part of the business. InSeptember 1979 the group board noted that

the factories ‘will stay independent but willproduce whatever is agreed and laid down bythe Group Board’.

By then the hire business, under themanagement of Harry Peacock, assisted by GeoffSpringett, was growing again. In 1977 it recordedannual sales of £250,000, and opened its owndepot at Brownhills under Joe’s son Julian. It wassoon bursting at the seams and looking for morespace. In May 1979, as the new Conservativegovernment took office, 200 cabin units were onhire, and plans were being made to increase thefleet to 500.

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All these problems made the brothers thinktwice about further Middle East orders. In anycase orders were beginning to dry up. Majorinfrastructure projects involving UK companieswere coming to an end and they faced increasedinternational competition for new contracts.Local manufacturers were emerging who couldsupply modular buildings more quickly and morecheaply, particularly since quality was often asecondary concern for purchasers. There wasalso a glut of second-hand units on the market.And the standard three-metre-wide flat-packspreviously shipped on cargo ships wereincompatible with the 2.4-metre-widecontainers carried by the new container ships.

The anxiety caused by the Riyadh contract maywell have contributed towards the decline in NatWernick’s health. By April 1979, through ill-health, he was no longer able to attend work,and he died two months later.

In paying tribute to him, his brothers alsohighlighted the work he had done to develop thecompany’s hire business. The brothers had beeneager to promote hire since the 1960s, afterrealising that the one small shed hired forseveral years to an American company had more than covered the costs of production. Buthiring was done haphazardly until Nat began tothink seriously about it. In the summer of 1971he began compiling a monthly list of buildingsavailable for hire, which he circulated to thecompany’s sales offices. By the autumn he hadpersuaded his brothers to agree to a smalladvertising campaign and, as the minutesrecorded in September 1971, ‘to set machineryin motion for buildings on hire’. In the followingmonth, another subsidiary, Dainty Smith, wasearmarked for refurbishing hire units that hadbeen returned from site. By the end of the year,insurance cover had been arranged, andcontract hire was being offered to majorconstruction companies. The vehicle used for the hire business was a subsidiary calledLindon Finance that, after being renamedseveral times in the interim, became known asWernick Hire from 1974 onwards. Progress wasunspectacular and by the summer of 1975Wernick Hire had just 90 units in stock, of which85 were out on hire.

Nat also strove to persuade his brothers that thetwo factories should standardise production ofthe cabins being ordered by Wernick Hire for thehire fleet. It was not easy. A previous suggestionthat some of Brownhills’ products should betransferred to Billericay to ease capacity in theMidlands factory had met resistance from hisbrother Joe. The stress on consensus, and thelack of a single managing director, which mighthave seemed understandable when threebrothers and a brother-in-law with very different

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80 years of the Wernick Group80 years of the Wernick Group

The first brochurefor the hire business in the 1970s.

Wernick's hire business began in1971, taking the name Wernick Hire in 1974. Here an early hire unit isseen outside the offices in Billericay.

Ray Hunt (far left)and BrianHumphreys (far right) at their25th anniversarypresentation, withMax Nieman,

A decision on the future of Billericay was longoverdue. As it happened, Lionel Wernick wasfriendly with John Mellon, the owner of a similarbusiness called Secometric based in nearbyWickford. The factory was more modern andmuch larger than Billericay and also operated adesign and build subsidiary at Horwich inLancashire. An even greater advantage wasSecometric’s expertise in timber-framed modularbuildings. The business was essentially profitablebut it had been neglected and there was somediscontent amongst the workforce. It was toogood an opportunity for Wernick to miss andLionel concluded the purchase for £750,000 inJanuary 1980. Within a few months the Billericayfactory had been closed and most employeeshad transferred to Wickford.

Production was also augmented at Brownhills,where a new factory (which became known asthe ‘Bottom Factory’) was built alongside theexisting factory (the ‘Top Factory’).

Buying Secometric coincided with the onset ofthe worst recession to hit the British economysince the 1930s. The deflationary policies of thenew Thatcher government resulted in a savagerecession that devastated large parts of UKmanufacturing industry. At the same time, as aresult of the privatisation programme, peopleworking in public corporations shrank from eightmillion to three million and the contribution ofthe sector to Gross Domestic Product halvedfrom ten to five per cent. The recession hitWernick’s bottom line. In 1981, while sales stoodat more than £7 million (equivalent to about £23million today), operating profits at the depth ofthe recession were just £83,000. Costs were cut,jobs were lost, bad debts were written off, andthere was even a suggestion that Wickfordshould be closed and production transferred toBrownhills but the company came through therecession relatively unscathed. Joe Wernickbelieved this could be attributed to thecompany’s ability to respond quickly to events,its accumulated expertise and its wide productrange. It was, he said, a firm run on ‘liberal lines’,

and he pointed to the good workingrelationships with staff, many of whom had beenwith the company for many years. ‘There is no“them and us” mentality,’ said Joe. ‘There are nodemarcation lines. We all work as a team.’ It wasthrough Joe’s initiative in the 1970s that thecompany had first introduced a staff sicknessbenefit scheme and began recognising long-serving employees. In 1975 he had proposed ‘ascheme for the future of worker participation’,an idea that never got any further, but in 1979employee profit-sharing was introduced, whichlasted for many years.

The company was still winning export orders inthe 1980s. Garden chalets were still being sentabroad, and in 1983 the value of orders placedby Swiss customers exceeded £100,000. Butotherwise the few export orders handled by thecompany tended to be one-offs. In 1980 twomajor earthquakes devastated parts of southernItaly and northern Algeria, and the companysupplied units to the Red Cross for emergencyaccommodation. Alan Hollyoak was amongstthose sent out to Algeria, while John Cavadasca,who came from Italian roots, flew out to Italy.The locals were impressed by John’s work ethicbut rather less by his lack of appreciation of localfood, telling him, ‘You work like a giant and eatlike a mouse.’ Garry Sylvester was part of theteam sent out to erect the units shipped out toArmenia following the earthquake in 1988.

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A more pressing matter was the crampedcapacity of the Billericay factory, which hadreached the end of its life. Steve Pridmore, whojoined the company from school in 1977 as ajunior in the drawing office under Bob Hooks,described it as old-fashioned, the offices housedin an old bungalow, manufacturing conducted inseveral small sheds. The factory was still turningout a mass of different products, which madefactory planning so difficult, and had not yetmoved on from panellised buildings. With thesite divided in two by a public road, trafficcongestion was a problem. There was also aperception that the company was lagging behindrivals like Portakabin and Elliott who werealready producing more advanced modularbuildings. Locally, recalled Pridmore, the factorywas known as ‘the shed manufacturer onRadford Way’.

This was a bit of an under-statement. A brochurefrom around 1977 advertises site huts, ablutionblocks and latrines; timber-framed, plywood-clad and plastic-covered cabins and mobileunits; semi-permanent and permanentsectional systems, such as Fast-Lock, Supa-Lokand Key-Pack; and demountable and relocatablesystems, providing interlocking units for officesand classrooms. But the brochure disguised thefact that similar products were beingmanufactured to different specifications atBrownhills and Billericay, including twocompletely different interlocking systems, theFast-Lock at Brownhills and the Key-Pack atBillericay. In 1978 Harry Peacock advocated theadoption of a more advanced and up-to-datesteel-frame building system, already beingadopted by other companies, but his idea wasnot taken any further.

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A selection of the prefabricatedbuildings supplied

by Wernick for hospital use in the

early 1970s.

A stylised brochurefor the Keypack

building system inthe 1970s.

Wernick suppliedemergency buildingsin the aftermath ofseveral disasters, including the Algerian earthquakein 1980. Seen herewith the erectionsquad is DonRichards at the front,with Julian Wernicksitting immediatelybehind him on theLand Rover.

Since the island lacked a proper quay,the steelwork had to be transhipped,and in the process much of it ended upbent, buckled or broken, which had tobe rectified prior to the main workscommencing. Peter Tanner led his ownconstruction team on behalf of thecompany, and hired extra labour fromneighbouring St Helena, the islandwhere Napoleon had spent his finalyears in exile. Peter and his teamexpected to spend three months onAscension Island, but stayed six months as a result of the problems they encountered.

By now exports were an occasional phenomenonfor the company. The company’s future lay inexploiting the still considerable untappedpotential of the UK market. The companycontinued to supply system or panellised units togovernment departments, local authorities,police authorities, hospitals and schools.

A Wernick building formed the police controlcentre used during the wedding of the Prince ofWales to Lady Diana Spencer in 1981. Wernickalso made site accommodation for contractorsinvolved in nearly every new motorway project,such as the M25, as it had ever since the late1950s. It also provided accommodation for staffworking on the Docklands Light Railway, one ofseveral railway-related projects.

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On two occasions the company was asked tosupply units for remote islands in the SouthAtlantic. In 1982, when a school party travelledto the remote Inaccessible Island, part of theTristan da Cunha archipelago in the SouthAtlantic, the complex they used for four monthswas made up of modular units supplied byWernick. Three years later the company won acontract worth £600,000 to supply ten buildingsfor the Royal Air Force base at Wideawake onAscension Island, located roughly half-waybetween the east coast of South America andthe west coast of Africa. This was built as a directresult of the Falklands War. It was a demandingenvironment and the contract was not withoutproblems. The island was covered with volcanicdust, requiring the constant use of waterbowsers to keep it at bay with temperaturessoaring above 90° Fahrenheit. The buildings, foradministrative use, were flown out on RAFaircraft, but the steelwork, for which thecompany was not responsible, was shipped out.

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This brochure highlights the

versatility of the sectional building,

in this case forsports use.

Those attending a sales meeting

in the early 1980s include

Norman Goldspink,Steve Pridmore,

Joe Wernick,Lionel Wernick, Don Richards, Betty Homer,

Ray Hunt, Jack Barton,

Barry Watts andTerry Kenny.

The three-storey site building seen inthe foreground wasspecially erected onscaffolding for thecontractor Bovis during the renovation of amajor hotel on Euston Road in London in the 1980s.

Wernick site accommodation supplied for thebuilding of the M25.Wernick units arestill a common sightat major road worksaround the UK.

the gloom ... Enterprising salesmen backed upby reliable products from a concerned andinvolved workforce. This is the stuff of whichsuccess in the struggling 80s is made.’ Theexternal perception of modular building, a

name that sounded much more respectablethan pre-fabricated, was also changing as moreand more high-quality modular buildingsappeared. Wernick was beginning to build aname for itself.

37


The acquisition of Secometric wasfundamental to moving Wernick away fromthe rag-bag range of products that hadtraditionally dominated its salescatalogues, and into the field of modularbuilding and the concept of ‘design andbuild’. The idea of working closely withclients to meet their specific overallrequirements in terms of modularbuildings was not new, and was alreadypractised by a number of rivals, but itincreased the scope of contracts thecompany could take on. By keeping designand production under one roof it alsoachieved greater control and improvedcustomer relationships by creating just onepoint of contact. In 1983, for instance, thecompany was widely praised for the designand speedy construction of an antenatalclinic for Royal Glamorgan Hospital. Therehad been deep snow that winter but theconstruction team cleared most of it awayby hand, maintaining the schedule thatallowed the clinic to open on time in April.The contract covered not only design andconstruction but also foundations,drainage, lighting, power, fire detection,heating, water, ventilation, plumbing,fitting out and landscaping.

Other examples of Wernick’s design andbuild capability in the early 1980s includedoffices for several London boroughs,including a series of area housing officesfor the Borough of Islington, worth nearlyhalf a million pounds. An article in a localEssex newspaper illustrated the way thecompany was changing: ‘The name ofWernick has long been known in the area... It progressed from the role of buildinggarden sheds to many of the moresophisticated portable buildings of today.Children are educated in them, thousandsdo office work in them. Many more spendhappy leisure hours in the recreationcentres they house. And the enterprisecontinues to gather momentum despite

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The acquisition of Secometric inWickford in 1980

enabled Wernick tomove into a moremodern factory.

These are typical ofthe many classroombuildings supplied byWernick in the 1970sand 1980s.

in his last year as president of the PrefabricatedBuildings Manufacturers’ Association of Great Britain.

The company’s systems reflected an age beforethe arrival of the advanced technology taken forgranted in the modern world. The typing pool,populated almost exclusively by women, was acommon component of most larger businesses.At Wernick these women spent most of theirtime typing up quotations from the handwrittennotes supplied by the sales team. Steve Pridmoreremembered the first time he was given a mobile

phone, as big as a couple of house-bricks,acquired second-hand from the local ambulanceservice. Wernick was slow to adoptcomputerisation or innovations such as the faxmachine. When one construction client toldSteve Pridmore that he would fax specificationsto the Wernick office, Steve had to tell him thatthe company did not have a fax machine;instead, he arranged for the material to be faxedto his mother, whose place of work did have amachine. At least the experience finallypersuaded the firm to invest in its first fax machine.

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In 1985 the company’s steady growth led tomanagement changes, the aim being to increasecentral control over key operations in order toimprove customer service. Ray Hunt becamegroup sales director and Brian Humphreys groupproduction director. Julian Wernick, Joe’s son,was appointed group hire director and DavidWernick, Lionel’s son, became groupconstruction director. Julian and David had bothjoined the company in 1978, Julian to run thefirst hire depot in the Midlands, and Davidjoined the sales department in Billericay. David

worked under Ray Hunt, with whom hedeveloped a close working relationship, sellingsite huts and sheds to construction companiesand local authorities. He moved from sales toconstruction, and became a director of theconstruction division in 1981. Julian too, whohad joined the Midlands sales team, had beenappointed a director in 1981, and both cousinsjoined the group board in 1983. Max Niemanretired as company secretary after 38 years andwas replaced by Frank Bessant. Joe and Lionelremained joint chief executives. Lionel was then


38

Julian Wernick and fellow director

Gary Griffiths at theopening of a new

Wernick Hire centrein Neath in the

early 1990s.

Staff from the southern office, withRay Hunt on the farleft, David Wernickon the far right ofthe back row, and

Brian Humphreys inthe foreground.

David Wernick andhis cousin Julianjoined the companyin the same year,1978.

Bob Hookes, head of the drawing officein the southern office, with LionelWernick and JohnCavasdasca, the factory manager.

The sales team fromthe southern office:behind Ray Hunt are(left to right) Tony Bircham, Jack Barton, Steve Pridmore, Norman Goldspinkand Barry Watts.

The men played hard and there were plenty oftorn ligaments, broken ankles and knocked-outteeth. One lunchtime game of football evenended up with an arrest for assault and severalcourt appearances.

The merger of Swiftplan with Cymru Buildings inthe 1970s coincided with the deterioration of theUK economy and the decline in internationalcontracts. Although the company moved tomaking steel-framed modular units in 1984,Swiftplan struggled and by 1986 it was losing£600,000 a year. The workforce was demoralisedand the calibre of senior management was poor.But the business still had the confidence of LordTaylor, the chairman of Taylor Woodrow. Heappreciated the efforts of Simon Reffell, thecompany’s newly appointed marketing manager,to turn around the company’s image, andsupported him against the incumbent managingdirector, who had met Lord Taylor to ask forSimon’s dismissal, but instead found himselfwithout a job. A trained roofing surveyor, Simonhad joined the company in 1986, havingpreviously been the divisional manager of aroofing company and managing director of acontract roofing business.

In 1987 Eddie Shaw was appointed field sales

manager. After joining Vic Hallam, a leadingmodular building company, he became exportsales manager before being recruited to run asimilar business in South Africa, where he spentseven years before returning to the UK. At thetime of his interview Swiftplan was doing sobadly that the factory itself was empty. (JulianJohns, working as a draughtsman, rememberedthere were times when the plans for the lastbuilding on order were on the drawing board.)

Both Shaw, who quickly became deputymanaging director, and Reffell, appointedmarketing director, believed that the plans putforward by Swiftplan’s then chairman wereinsufficient to turn the business around, but theiralternative approach faced resistance from somestaff who would have preferred redundancy. Infact, Taylor Woodrow had told Swiftplan that thebusiness would be closed unless it reverted toprofit within a year. ‘It was a bit of a battle,’recalled Shaw, ‘and a really big challenge.’ Butboth men had the support of Taylor Woodrow asthey worked hard to overhaul the business.Steadily the business began to recover, winningseveral major contracts, and although it wasbreaking even rather than making a profit, TaylorWoodrow was impressed enough to keep thebusiness going.

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In 1989 Wernick took the opportunity to takeover one of its rivals, a decision with far-reachingconsequences for the future of the business.Swiftplan was eating into Wernick’s marketshare, its better quality steel-clad modular unitsfinding greater favour than Wernick’s plastic-covered and timber-framed units.

Serendipity again played a part. Lionel Wernickwas friendly with George Borwell, a seniordirector of Taylor Woodrow, Swiftplan’s parentcompany. George approached Lionel whenSwiftplan was put up for sale and asked him if hewould be interested in buying the business.Lionel travelled to see the company at Neath insouth Wales, liked the business, its managementand premises, persuaded his brother Joe thatthey could overcome the difficulties facing thebusiness, and negotiated the purchase for£750,000. His accountant told him it was abargain. Swiftplan became part of Wernick on 14 July 1989.

Taylor Woodrow was one of the UK’s leadingconstruction companies, and Swiftplan’s mainrole was the manufacture of siteaccommodation for Taylor WoodrowInternational. It also supplied other constructioncompanies working overseas, as well as otherinternational businesses active in Africa and theMiddle East. Originally based in Hayes in westLondon, the firm had taken advantage of grantsaimed at encouraging businesses to move toareas of unemployment, and relocated to Neathin 1980. There it merged with an existingbusiness, also part of Taylor Woodrow, calledCymru Buildings. The latter was the successor toa business called Holder PrefabricatedIndustries, already well established in Neath bythe early 1970s, which made cheap site cabinsclad in painted plywood.

Two of Swiftplan’s longest serving employees in2013, Jeff Pritchard and Dennis Gibson, beganwork with Cymru Buildings in 1979 and 1977respectively. They recalled their own days asapprentices, when foremen were invariablytough and invariably inclined to humiliate youngapprentices. They also had to put up withtraditional teasing, such as being sent to thestores to ask for ‘a long weight’ or ‘a left-handedhammer’. At Christmas the tradition was foreach of the apprentices in turn to stand on thetable at the Christmas lunch and sing a carol;those who refused were ‘greased’, that is,covered in glue and sawdust. Most apprenticesput up with all this but some left. The factory,Jeff and Dennis remembered, could be very cold.During wintry weather, they had to shovel snowout of the factory before work could start. Onewinter they were able to skate along the frozencanal that ran alongside the factory.

This was a time when work-related socialactivities were still popular. A successful footballteam played for several years in the Swansea &District Sunday League, winning the fourthdivision title in its first year. A lot of informalsport, football, cricket and rugby went on inlunch breaks on the land alongside the factory.

40


Acquisition of Swiftplan, Neath,

1989: (left to right)Don Richards, Kenneth Johns

(chairman), unknown, Ray Hunt,

Eddie Shaw (managing director),

David Wernick, Joe Wernick, Simon Reffell,

Lionel Wernick,George Borwell and

unknown.

The annual Wernick footballmatch played between the Midlands and theSouth during the 1980s.

to use their initiative. While they found Joe andLionel Wernick relatively cautious andconservative, David Wernick, who was taking abigger part in the business and took over asSwiftplan’s chairman, was very dynamic,although incredibly cost-conscious. He resisted,for instance, Swiftplan’s computerisationprogramme, and refused to authorise thepurchase of a fax machine – which nevertheless went ahead without his authority.

Both the acquisition of Swiftplan and theeconomic boom of the late 1980s helpedWernick achieve sales of nearly £22 million andoperating profits of almost a million pounds in1990. Capital employed had risen from less than£2 million in 1981 to nearly £5.5 million, and thenumber of employees had reached 393. By then,as the company was working on a contract worth£850,000 to build an extension for the airport onGibraltar, it was ranked amongst the top tenfirms in its field in the UK. With the UK marketfor modular buildings worth in excess of £200million, this handful of firms accounted for halfthe market, and Wernick had an estimatedmarket share of around seven per cent. Theother fifty per cent of the market was splitbetween nearly a hundred smaller firms.

During the second half of the 1980s, the UKeconomy had reached a record annual growthrate of 3.7 per cent. Income tax had beensteadily reduced, the standard rate falling from33 per cent to 25 per cent and the top rate from83 per cent to 40 per cent. But the upturn wasjust the precursor to yet another downturn, asthe sequence of boom and bust that hadplagued the UK economy since the 1960s carriedon. By the end of 1989, it was clear that theboom, which had greatly benefited theconstruction and allied trades, was coming to anend. Falling tax and interest rates hadoverheated the economy. Manufacturing hadsuffered so badly in the early 1980s that it wasunable to respond to increased demand for

43


In particular, under Eddie Shaw, the Neathfactory concentrated on steel-framed modularbuildings and improving quality standards. Thiswas already the way the market was moving –clients preferred modular buildings since theydid not rot, there was no risk of infestation, theyavoided the chemical treatment necessary topreserve timber, and cold-rolled galvanised steelneither rusted nor corroded. The units weredurable, flexible and energy-efficient. An earlyexample of the flexibility of these units was thecontract to build Wales’ first ‘American-style,drive-in, fast-food restaurant’, called BurgerMaster, next to the M4 near Port Talbot in 1988.In the same year the company also built afloating base camp, lifted into position onto abarge on the Thames, for the managingcontracting team leading the development ofCanary Wharf in London’s Docklands.

Taylor Woodrow was fighting off an unwelcomebid from rivals Bovis, who accused the companyof failing to concentrate on its core activities. Areview of the company classed Swiftplan as anon-core business, and a search began to find asuitable buyer. Within Wernick, there was amixed reaction to the acquisition, sinceSwiftplan was seen by some as a threat to thefuture of the Wickford and Brownhills factories.There was trepidation in Neath as well. As amajor public company, Taylor Woodrow hadbeen run on very professional lines, often a littletoo regimented and inflexible, but with areputation for looking after its employees.Wernick, on the other hand, was still seen as ‘arun-it-by-the-seat-of-your-pants’ organisation,although Shaw, now managing director, andReffell, now sales and marketing director, bothrelished the encouragement given to managers

42


This floating base camp was

supplied by Wernickin 1988 for the

London Docklandsdevelopment.

Eddie Shaw, managing director ofSwiftplan, receivingan award from thelocal MP, Peter Hain,in the early 1990s.

This building for Beal School in Ilford demonstratesWernick's progress in design and construction by theearly 1990s.

A range of elegantgreenhouses marketed by the company in the 1980s.

discussed the situation with the company’s bankto make sure reserves were sufficient ‘to keepthe company buoyant’, as the managementcommittee minutes put it. By the autumn, seniormanagement salaries, including those ofshareholders, were being cut and more jobswere lost, as Lionel warned that ‘the positioncannot continue into next year’. Ray Huntpointed out that too often Wernick was missingout on tenders in spite of discounts and lowmargins, while David Wernick wantedunprofitable products purged from the range.David had always been critical of the quasi-independence of the Brownhills and Billericayfactories and it had taken him ages to persuadehis uncle Joe and his father Lionel to standardisethe product range. He was also questioning thefocus of the business on manufacturing, when hewas convinced that the hire business was muchmore profitable. At the end of 1991 plans werebeing discussed to invest further in production atNeath to meet the increasing demands ofcustomers. By then Wernick’s sales had fallen toless than £16 million, with an operating loss ofmore than £400,000.

The failure to staunch the haemorrhage of cashas losses mounted during 1991 led thecompany’s bankers to insist on a financial reviewto determine whether or not to continue tosupport the business. The company persuadedthe bank that it should commission its ownaccountants to conduct the review. Thisrecommended the sale of one of themanufacturing sites to raise the cash needed topay off the money owed to the bank. Thecompany had always pursued a policy ofinvesting in the freehold of all its propertieswherever possible but the Neath site wasactually leasehold. The choice therefore laybetween Brownhills and Wickford. SinceWickford (and Neath) was a more modernfactory, the decision was made to closeBrownhills. It was the strength of the company’sproperty assets, coupled with stringent costcontrols, that finally pulled the company throughits worst crisis. For Eddie Shaw, ‘Wernick survived

on a wing and a prayer.’

Implementing the closure proved emotionallydraining for Joe and Lionel Wernick. Making theannouncement to the Brownhills workforce,Lionel Wernick remembered, was ‘one of thetoughest things I have had to do in my life’.Arrangements were made for staff either totransfer to Neath or receive help to findalternative jobs. The closure finally brought to an end the division between the Midlands andthe South but left Julian Wernick in particularfeeling that he had no future in the business,which ultimately led him to decide to leave,taking with him a small mail-order subsidiary,Park Lines, specialising in garages, workshopsand garden buildings, bought some years earlier.On top of this, the bank refused to allow thecompany the funds needed to carry through theclosure, resulting in the sale of several othersmaller properties.

A full working week was restored in January1992 but times were still hard. The companyfinally returned to profit at the end of March forthe first time in eighteen months. Sadly, BrianHumphreys, who had risen from the shopfloor tobecome group production director, died ofcancer in the early summer of that year afternearly 40 years with the business.

The crisis brought Steve Potter into the companyin 1993 as the company’s first externallyappointed finance director-designate. It hadbecome clear that Wernick had grown beyondthe capability of Pat Poel, who had given suchexcellent service as the company’s book-keeper.She had joined the accounts department in1965, eventually becoming accounts director,and would continue as Steve Potter’s deputy. Shewas working for the company until shortly beforeher death aged 82 in 2005. Steve Potter hadcome to know the company well as one of itsexternal auditors, and he had helped to preparethe financial data required by the company’sbankers. He realised that the company’s financialsystems needed bringing up to date in order to

45


consumer goods, which were once again suckedin from abroad, creating a record balance ofpayments deficit. House prices soared, the rateof inflation grew to ten per cent and interestrates rose to fifteen per cent in 1989-90. Asboom turned to bust, thousands of homeowners were left with houses worth less thanthe price they had paid for them. While inflationdipped, unemployment climbed again.

Unlike the recession of the early 1980s, Wernickwas this time caught out. Quality problems werenot being tackled effectively. Only now was itfinally agreed to go ahead with thecomputerisation of the drawing office. Fallingorders were aggravated by the economic slump.But the company was also affected by serious

losses from a development led by David Wernickto convert two properties in Little Venice inLondon into ten apartments that went badlywrong for a variety of reasons and ultimatelycost Wernick half a million pounds. As Davidlater recalled, the company could not copesimultaneously with manufacturing losses,recession and a loss-making propertydevelopment that ‘was sucking the lifeblood outof the company’.

Financial figures worsened steadily during 1990.By the beginning of 1991, the company’s lossesled to the introduction of a three-day workingweek at Wickford and Brownhills. Strict spendingcontrols were imposed. As summer approached,the outlook remained grim. Lionel Wernick

44


Staff outside the former Brownhills

offices: (Back left toright) Carl Warren,

Joe Beale, Peter Kirton, Ben Yates,

Alan Hollyoak, Garry Sylvester and

Bill Nicholls; (front left to right)George Stewart,

Kerry ?, Trevor Goodwin,

Margaret Webster,Terry Kenny, Diane Wilks, Ron Wood,

Joyce Loat andSylvia Harper.

David Wernick and Ray Hunt were the perfectfoils for each other, one the swashbucklingentrepreneur, the other more cautious. But both men were ambitious to expand thegroup in the aftermath of the financial crisis of the early 1990s.

Ray Hunt’s contribution to the group wasimmense. Never having had the opportunity tofurther his own education, he had worked hisway up through the business like several of hispeers. One of the many who had beenmentored and trained by Lionel Wernick, he felt

great loyalty towards him. Shrewd, able andfinancially astute, he was gifted with greatcharm and had proved an outstandingsalesman, known for his catchphrase, ‘Get it inthe book!’ He had worked with David Wernicksince David had first entered the business andRay’s wisdom and experience proved invaluablein what was an excellent working partnership.Ray himself had mentored youngsters joiningthe company, including Steve Pridmore, forwhom Ray was ‘a tough guy, a rock, a fair,people-minded person’, willing to allow othersto use their initiative.

47

A nationwide business 1995 onwards

give management current financial information,and he finally persuaded David Wernick and RayHunt, neither of them enthusiasts for moderntechnology, to begin the long overdue process ofcomputerisation, with the first PC being installedin 1994. Today the company operates a group-wide network of some 300 PCs and tablets.

The company broke even in 1993, making asmall operating profit on turnover furtherreduced to less than £12 million. At the end ofthe previous year both Joe and Lionel Wernickhad given up executive involvement in thebusiness, taking up the roles of joint non-executive chairmen. The financial crisis hadtaken its toll on both men. Joe Wernick died atthe age of 73 in the summer of 1994. After hisbrother’s death, Lionel’s own long and devotedservice was recognised by his appointment asthe company’s life president. The responsibilityfor the future of the Wernick Group was now inthe hands of David Wernick and Ray Hunt as thenew joint chief executives.

46



5

Ray Hunt and David Wernick receiving the Growing BusinessAward from BDOStoy Hayward in 1997.

Joe and Lionel Wernick at a family

day at Joe's house inWolverhampton in

the early 1990s

extended with another small acquisition in 1997of the Glasgow-based firm Donald Smith(Container Leasing) Ltd, with a fleet of 300 steelsecurity stores.

It was the Group’s great good fortune that this rapid expansion was accompanied bysustained growth in the UK economy. By 1995the economy was growing at five per cent everyyear, and the average annual rate for the decadeafter 1997 was nearly three per cent. Despite the tremors caused by the dot.com fiasco in2000, this was a time of economic stability and prosperity.

With a template successfully established, asteady stream of other acquisitions followed. In1998 the purchase of the northern division ofMAC Containers, Samson of Wakefield andAlliedcabin’s hire business added a further 1,500hire units and two more hire centres in Brackleyand Newton Abbott. Another 1,500 units andfour more depots (Edinburgh, Newcastle, Hulland Shaftesbury) came with the takeover of UKCabins and Portable Cabin Services in 1999.

In two years the Group had invested £8 million in Wernick Hire, with the number of hire centres standing at 17 and the number of hireunits at more than 8,000. Coverage of Scotlandcontinued with the addition of an Aberdeencentre through the acquisition of Securastore in 2001. Two years later the hire fleet exceeded10,000 units following the purchase of the Jarvis hire business and the Rok Build fleet,based in the south and south-west. Expansionresumed in 2005, with a string of acquisitionstaking Wernick Hire to 27 hire centres and17,000 hire units: Accommodation Hire fromAndrews Sykes, CDC Instant Space, based inCornwall, and the Selwood Group’s hire division. In addition, York-based PKAccommodation, named after its founder, Paul Kenyon, was acquired, specialising in thesale of refurbished modular units. Many of these businesses came with leasehold premises.The financial crisis of the early 1990s hadunderscored the importance for Wernick ofmaintaining a strong asset base, and one of thechallenges in the wake of these acquisitions wasto find new freehold sites.

0


David Wernick and Ray Hunt were supported bymembers of a new executive board formed in1994, which included Eddie Shaw and SimonReffell as well as Graham Craine, who wasdeputy managing director of hire business untilhis retirement in 2005. In 1996, on hisappointment as finance director, Steve Potter,who had been acting as company secretary, alsobecame a full member.

The recession of the early 1990s presented theWernick Group with a great opportunity. TheGroup had survived a recession that had leftmany other construction-related companiesseriously weakened. With more than a hundredbusinesses operating in the hire sector, therewas plenty of choice. For David Wernick, thiswas a chance for the Group to strengthen thehire division, which he had always regarded asthe part of the business with the most potential.Under Julian Wernick, the division had beenprofitable, but it had always been regarded as anappendage of the manufacturing business.

The first opportunity came in 1995 when DavidWernick heard that the owners of one of themajor modular building firms, Vic Hallam, wereselling the hire division. David Wernick, RayHunt and Eddie Shaw met to discuss the idea ofmaking a bid for Hallam Hire. Ray Hunt wascautious about the proposal but David Wernickand Eddie Shaw were both enthusiastic. Davidalso persuaded his father to back the idea. AsEddie Shaw later reflected, ‘It was the beginningof the rise of the Wernick Group.’

David Wernick was almost too late in contactingHallam’s parent company, Hillsdown Holdings.Heads of agreement were just being finalisedwith another bidder. Arranging an appointment,he drew up an offer letter and travelled toHillsdown’s Hampstead headquarters. He set outthe price he would pay for the business, andpromised to transfer the following day a £10,000non-returnable deposit into the company’s bankaccount , but only if he was granted exclusivebidding rights. In return, he would hand over the

agreed purchase price of £1.8 million within four weeks.

It was an audacious approach, and it paid off.Hillsdown agreed to the deal. But having madethe commitment to buy the business, then andonly then did David Wernick approach thecompany’s bankers to negotiate the loan heneeded. Steve Potter recalled accompanyingLionel Wernick, David Wernick and Ray Hunt tomeet the bankers in London. When they putforward their request, the bank executives wereinitially concerned but once David had fullyexplained the rationale behind the deal theywere fully supportive.

With sites at Isleworth in the south, Langley Millnear Nottingham in the Midlands, and Rochdalein the north, and a hire fleet of one thousandunits, Hallam Hire doubled the size of Wernick’shire business. The experience taught DavidWernick a lot about making acquisitions, andgave him the confidence to repeat the process.He did not wait long. Within a year Vibroplanthad approached the company about selling itsfleet. David submitted his initial offer for thebusiness, which was rejected in favour of ahigher alternative. But after a couple of monthsVibroplant contacted David again to ask if hewould still stand by his original offer. By then,the business had deteriorated further, and DavidWernick reduced his initial offer accordingly.When this drew an initially adverse reaction, heresponded that any subsequent offer, in the lightof the company’s poor condition, would be evenlower. The deal was sealed for £2 million in thesummer of 1996. As a result, the number ofWernick’s hire depots expanded from seven totwelve, with new centres in Glasgow, Dundee,Leeds, Newcastle and Newport, and the size ofthe hire fleet more than doubled to 5,500 units.The acquisition proved a great success,particularly in expanding Wernick Hire’spresence in Scotland. The hire centres inGlasgow and Dundee were so successful thatthey very quickly had to be relocated to largerpremises. The Scottish business was further

48


A modular buildingbeing refurbished atthe York workshop ofPK Accommodation.

Wernick was fond of telling his centre managers,‘We’ll be here when our rivals have all gone.’ Thestrategy of building up the hire business had amajor impact on the Group’s financialperformance. Hire was indeed more profitablethan manufacturing. In ten years sales nearlytrebled from less than £12 million in 1993 tomore than £33 million in 2003, but theimprovement in profitability was even moremarked, with operating profits of more than £4million. This pattern continued, with turnoverreaching more than £80 million in 2013,operating profits exceeding £12 million andearnings before interest, tax, depreciation andamortisation of over £20 million.

It was not just the breadth of coverage thathelped the business to grow. From the outsetthere was an emphasis on raising quality andimproving service to meet the increasingdemands of customers. It was all about theability to make quick decisions, remainingflexible, keeping promises, fulfilling specificationsand meeting delivery times. All this helpedWernick Hire to command a premium in avolatile market. The company took pride instriving to meet customer specifications. PatShayler was proud to say that never once hadshe had to say no to a client. In 2007, when aconstruction company approached Wernick witha plea for a cheaper vandal-proof unit for use onsite, it resulted in the AV-Flex System, cheaper,quicker to install, more robust and more flexible.The System became increasingly popular withconstruction companies, and highlighted theadvantage the company had in manufacturing itsown units. For Pat, every day brings differentchallenges. ‘You never know what the nextphone call will bring. No two days are the same.’

At the same time a new hire business emergedfrom the spate of acquisitions. When Wernicktook over the hire fleet of Andrews Sykes in2005, it struck David Wernick that part of thefleet had been built up specifically for specialevents. For example, the business had suppliedthe Commonwealth Games in Manchester. These

51


Well-known for being on the lookoutfor acquisitions, the Wernick Groupwas regularly approached by ownerswishing to sell. They were alsoattracted by the speed with whichDavid Wernick took decisions, oftencritical for sellers, and by his recordfor sticking to his original offer.Between 2006 and 2012 anotherdozen hire businesses wereaccumulated. The most significantwere Rollalong Hire, with 4,000units, in 2009; Rovacabin, with 4,000cabins and modular buildings, in2011; and, in 2012, Kier Group’s3,500-strong hire fleet. The latterdeal also came with an exclusivefive-year agreement to supply allKier’s site accommodation needsthroughout Britain, whichdemonstrated the extent of Wernick’sreputation in the field.

The integration of so many different businessesinto Wernick Hire was accomplished with veryfew problems. Pat Shayler joined the group in1999 following the acquisition of UK Cabins, andsoon became manager of the Stockton hirecentre. Kath Hodges, who joined in 1996,eventually became responsible for qualitycontrol nationwide. Both of them believed thatany feeling of ‘them and us’ disappeared veryquickly, and that the family nature of thebusiness helped to unify the business. DavidWernick always emphasised that staff were thecornerstone of the business. Staff from acrossthe hire business come together on a regularbasis, whether for presentations recognising thebest performing hire centres or for trainingsessions. In recent times pay awards have beenmade annually with only one exception, andstaff receive the usual benefits and recognitionfor long service. It also helped that seniormanagers running the hire centres were given agreat deal of responsibility, and allowed to geton with their jobs without interference providedthey met their budgets. Given a lot of discretion,

they were able to manage their centres almostas separate businesses, with their own profitand loss accounts. The Group was verytransparent about its overall financialperformance, a quality that impressedemployees who came into the Group havingworked for much less open businesses. And in amale-dominated industry, the Group isexceptional in the number of women that itemploys in senior management positions.

Turning over £50 million a year, Wernick Hire hasbecome the Group’s financial powerhouse. Alarge manufacturer with a small hire businesshad been transformed into a leading hirebusiness with a significant manufacturingbusiness. It is a financially stable business in anindustry notorious for financial instability. By2013 the business operated from 32 centreswith 24,000 units across the UK. It was atestament to the success of a policy of buyingbadly run businesses in a booming sector andturning them around through goodmanagement. Wernick also refused to followother rivals in the dangerous policy ofdiscounting rates in difficult times. As David

50


Top to bottom:

Stacked Citycabins at Swansea City FC's first team training facility.

Blast rated accommodation hired by Vivergo Fuels.

Stacked Avflex GreenSpace accommodation, in which Wernick isthe market leader, supplied to Vinci Construction.

Gregor Munro shakes hands withDavid Wernick in

August 2006 on thesale of his businessScotia Kabins to the

Wernick Group.

Although the emphasis had been on investment in the hire business, manufacturingwas not neglected and there were majorchanges in the years as manufacturing also tookadvantage of a stable and growing economy.Eddie Shaw was insistent that all modular unitsshould be steel-framed if the business was toremain competitive. Steel-framed production,which brought significant savings in labour costsover the old-fashioned timber-frame method,was already being used by rivals. Eddie also had his eye on the more profitable permanent-build sector and wanted to moveaway from the increasingly competitive marketfor site accommodation.

In 1998 Wernick Buildings launched RapidPlan3000, a new steel-framed volumetric buildingsystem using galvanised steel-frames that neverrotted or rusted, were capable of being clad inbrick or steel, and could be used for buildings ofup to four storeys. The prototype was the £1.3million two-storey head offices built for NewburyDistrict Council (later West Berkshire Council) injust 26 weeks. Eddie Shaw and Simon Reffell hadbeen debating the adoption of galvanised steel-frames for some time. One day when their officewas covered in segments of cold-rolled steel theclient from the council was shown in, took onelook at them and immediately said, ‘Yes! That’swhat we want!’

It was not a universally popular move. Ray Hunt,in particular, was cautious about the idea,bearing in mind its impact on Wickford. But areview of production at Wickford revealed that itwas lagging behind Neath in several areas. First,Neath was simply more profitable. This wasobvious to Richard Jackson, who had beenemployed at Neath since 1979, when he wasasked to spend some time training men atWickford: ‘Wickford could not keep up with us.’Lower margins had forced Wickford to take onorders for only the simplest of panel buildings,but the knock-on effect was insufficient orders tomaintain Wickford’s profitability. Also, a shortageof local skilled labour ruled out the possibility of

converting the factoryto produce steel-framed units.Conversely, in Neath,there was a pool ofskilled industrialworkers. In January2000 the end ofmanufacturing atWickford wasannounced, and allproduction wastransferred to Neath,where another assembly line was added. To fund this restructuring, parts of the Wickfordsite were sold off, but the Group has kept itshead office there.

With manufacturing concentrated at Neath, theemphasis shifted from supplying units to the hirebusiness, which tended to acquire any units itneeded elsewhere, towards developing WernickBuildings as a provider of high-quality permanentmodular buildings designed and built to

53


units, along with others, formed the initial fleetfor a new company, Wernick Event Hire,launched at the beginning of 2006. Partly fromacquisitions made on behalf of Wernick Hire,and partly from acquisitions made specificallywith Wernick Event Hire in mind, the latter grewquickly, increasing turnover from £700,000 in2006 to nearly £7 million in 2012. Operatingfrom five hire centres, the company covers theentire UK. There are few major events thecompany is not involved with. The rapid growthof the business, according to Liam Muldoon, thecompany’s general manager since 2007, owesmuch to family ownership, with short lines ofcommunication and minimal bureaucracymaking it possible to have almost immediateanswers to questions. Echoing the views of othermanagers not only in the hire business butacross the Group, he felt they were given thefreedom to achieve for the company in achallenging environment.

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Wernick units can befound anywhere in

the UK. This one wassitting at the foot ofthe castle in Durham.

A Wernick Anti-Vandal unit being

craned into positionat a Wernick depot.

Breaking ground for Bishop's ParkCollege in Clacton:the group featuresSteve Pridmore,Harry Peacock andDavid Wernick.

An aerial view of the site of the Neathfactory, acquired byWernick in 1989.

individual client specifications. Computer-aided design (CAD) had been in use at Neath for sometime, giving scope for more creative ideas,helping to move clients away from theperception that modular buildings were no morethan a series of linked boxes, and enabling thecompany to respond more imaginatively to ever-increasing client expectations.

The range of contracts demonstratedjust how far the modular buildingindustry had come. There was, forinstance, a £2.6 million clinic for AIDSand tropical diseases for the WesternGeneral Hospital, Edinburgh, in 1997.In the same year Wernick wascommissioned by Liverpool CityCouncil to build a new school todesigns by the city architect to replacethe decaying original premises stillhousing Monksdown County PrimarySchool. The complex, worth nearly£1.3 million, was completed under

budget in 36 weeks with a traditional brick-cladexterior. The contract was managed from theWernick office at Aldridge under Sylvia Harper,who recalled Monksdown as the mostmemorable of all the contracts she had beeninvolved with. At the opening of the school, shehad been moved by the song performed by thechildren that featured her by name.

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54


Wernick's flexibleRapidPlan 3000 system was first

used for the head offices of NewburyDistrict (later WestBerkshire) Council in 1998. A decade

later it was used tocreate a striking

modern building forBishops Park

College, Clacton.

Contemporary prefabricated buildings are almostindistinguishablefrom those constructed by traditional methods.This is an ancillaryhospital building.

This sophisticatedisolation clinic builtfor Edinburgh's Western GeneralHospital in 1997showed how farmodular building had developed.

Monksdown CountyPrimary School builtby Wernick in 1997.

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Amongst the more unusual contracts fulfilled byWernick Buildings were modular petrol fillingstations for BP in Russia. Ian Griffiths, who joinedthe company in 1988, spent three weeks inMoscow in the summer of 1997 putting onecomplex together with his seven-strong team.The temperature, he recalled, hit 42° Centigradeat times, but three days were also lost to rain,creating a sea of mud that bogged down the on-site crane. The poverty was appalling and thelocal mafia appeared to have their own corner inevery hotel. The Russian workers on siteappeared aloof until the last day when theythrew the most amazing party for Ian and hiscolleagues. In the spring of 2000 Wernickdesigned and built an unusual timber-framedbuilding, the Challenger Learning Centre, at theNational Space Science Centre in Leicester,Europe’s first such centre, sponsored by thefamilies of those lost in the space shuttle disasterin 1986. In 2008 Wernick Buildings designed andproduced an innovative new modular police cell,a patented all-steel structure made to strictspecifications to meet Home Office standards.

In the same year the firm completed a newdialysis unit for Hayes Cottage Hospital, a two-storey, 24-bed hospital building constructed from

37 factory-built sections delivered and cranedinto position in just four days, with the fitting outcompleted in eight weeks. The client hadallowed the company to begin with a blankcanvas, permitting a more imaginative designappropriate to the site. For Julian John, who hadspent his career as a designer with the firm, thishighlighted the creative freedom given bymodern technology. ‘It’s all about putting yourmark on something in a small way.’

In 2012 Alan Hollyoak undertook his mostchallenging project as a contracts manager,supervising a complex and difficult £3 millioncontract for the Atomic Weapons Establishmentat Aldermaston. In the same year his colleagueGarry Sylvester faced his most challengingproject, overseeing the construction of a £4million 44-bed two-storey brick-faced isolationwing for Warwick Hospital, completed in whatthe client described as ‘the miracle time of 26weeks’. Prompt delivery according tospecification – and overcoming problems shouldthey arise – is a crucial part of the Group’scommitment to clients. An integral part ofWernick Buildings is the separate constructioncompany that ensures high standards of qualityon site.

56


Built as a direct consequence of theChallenger spaceshuttle disaster in

1986, the ChallengerLearning Centre atthe National Space

Science Centre in Leicester is a

distinctive timber-framed Wernickbuilding erected

in 2000. The dialysis unit for Hayes CottageHospital completed

in 2008.

Opposite top:The innovative all-steel Pcflex

modular police celldeveloped by

Wernick for theHome Office in

2008. When Workington police

station was floodedin 2009, a Pcflex custody suite was

supplied and installed in five days.

59


58


The light and airy reception area of themulti-million pound

extension for Warwick Hospitalbuilt by Wernick

in 2012.

The flexibility of Wernick buildingsmakes them ideal

for use as marketing suites.

This state-of-the -arttimber-clad buildingsupplied by Wernick is the clubhouse forHillingdon Cycle Circuit in West London.

An expanding workload only highlighted theinadequacy of the Neath factory. It had neverbeen truly satisfactory. It was a leasehold site,and increasingly cramped, limiting the size ofunits that could be made. There were plans inthe mid-1990s to transfer to a larger site butcomplications over the lease prevented themove taking place. As it turned out, this wasfortunate, as the Group struck a much betterdeal in 2013 to take over a freehold factory atnearby Kenfig from the receivers of the previousowners. The building itself was 40 per centlarger, with wider bays that made it possible tomake larger units, and came with nine acres ofland for storage. The Group has invested morethan £2.5 million in the site and manufacturing isdue to be transferred in the second half of 2014.

Jonathan Wernick, David’s eldest son, had joined the company in February 2012. Like hisfather, he had spent his school holidays anduniversity vacations working in the business. Hehad never thought of doing anything else. ‘Ialways felt like I was growing up into the familybusiness. It’s kind of cool being the fourthgeneration of the family.’ He feels that thebusiness is part of his personal life and thatbeing part of the family gives him an additionaldrive to succeed. He cares deeply about thebusiness and its future. There are pressures:‘you’re judged by your name and you’ve got tolive up to expectations so you find you have towork twice as hard as anyone else. Peopleexpect a lot from you and you don’t want to letyour dad down.’

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60


Clyst Heath primaryschool in Devon.

Wernick units beingconstructed at theWernick Buildingsfactory in Neath.

could be implemented without any tension orpressure from external shareholders.

Following the retirement of Ray Hunt in 2001,executive management of the business was inthe hands of David Wernick and the executiveteam. But David Wernick, an instinctiveentrepreneur, who at one point insisted onscrutinising every invoice, always recognised thatthe way the Group was managed would have tochange as it became bigger. The Group’s successand dynamism helped to attract the talentedmanagers needed to fill places in an expandingmanagement team. David Wernick, with a focuson long-term strategy, has stepped back into therole of executive chairman. Simon Doran, whojoined Wernick in 2004, initially as Wernick Hiremanaging director, was appointed group chiefexecutive in January 2013. Alongside StevePotter and Simon Reffell, the team wascompleted by Michael Thistlethwaite asmanaging director of Wernick Hire and AndyKing, who succeeded Eddie Shaw as managing

63


Like his father, he is working his way up throughthe business, learning from experience as well asfrom his colleagues. He recalled the DiamondJubilee holiday in June 2012 when he and hisdeputy manager at the event hire depot inAldridge realised that if they were to have 14toilet blocks delivered on time to a client thefollowing Wednesday, they had no option, giventhe intervening holiday, but to overhaul the unitsthemselves, and they both worked 15 hours aday that weekend. Jonathan agreed to do therepainting, which took him so long that he wason the verge of giving up when he rememberedhow he had been complaining only the weekbefore that a member of staff had been takingtoo long doing the same thing! Jonathan iscurrently general manager of Eventlink, thetemporary seating division of Wernick Event Hire.

The family nature of the Wernick Group remainsan intrinsic characteristic of the business. Thestructure of family ownership had changed atthe end of the 1990s. The growth of the Groupnot only attracted approaches from thosewishing to sell businesses, it also broughtapproaches from those wishing to buy Wernick.The most serious of these came in 1999 when amajor foreign company made a bid. This wasrejected by the family but for the first time it hadset a market value on the business. This led thefamily of the late Joe Wernick to sell theirshares, achieved through loan notes redeemableover several years, to Lionel Wernick and hisfamily, giving them outright control. Shortlyafterwards, 3i, which had first invested inWernick in 1962, also sold its holding back to thefamily. For David Wernick, this cleared the wayfor a long-term strategy for future growth that

62


Wernick Event Hiresupplied the gantryfor the finish line of

the Bupa GreatNorth Run.

A Wernick cabin can be seen in the

background.

Andy King, Managing Director ofWernick Buildings.

Left: Steve Potter,Group Finance Director.

Right: Michael Thistlethwaite, Managing Director of Wernick Hire.

As the Group celebrates 80 years in 2014

• The Group has five operating companies: Wernick Buildings, Wernick Construction, Wernick Hire, Wernick Event Hire and PK Accommodation (shortly to become Wernick Refurbished Buildings)

• The Group has turnover of £90 million and net assets worth £56 million

• The Group employs 550 people

• The Group operates from 36 sites (33 are freehold)

• Wernick Buildings will move to a new nine acre site at Kenfig by the end of 2014

• Wernick Refurbished Buildings will move to a new seven acre site at Shipton, near York by the end of 2014

• The Group is the oldest company in the UK operating in their market and

• Jonathan Wernick is the fourth generation of the family to work within the business

The journey made by the Group over the last 80years has been colourful and eventful. Thedetermination and commitment, inventivenessand entrepreneurial instincts of Sam Wernick,who laboured so hard for so long to see hisbusiness established, remain part of the make-upof today’s Wernick Group.

65


director of WernickBuildings. BothMichael and Andywere examples of thetalented managersrecruited to seniormanagement positionsfrom outside theGroup. Beneath themthere is a spread ofcapable managementwithin each of thesubsidiary companies.While seniorexecutives are fullyinvolved in thebusiness, managersare allowed to exercise their initiative andencouraged to be entrepreneurial within theGroup’s overall strategy and budget.Accountability, simplicity and transparency areimportant parts of the principles that guide the Group.

David Wernick takes the view that structure,financial control and enthusiasm are vital forbusiness success. He has always encouraged a dynamic culture, recognising the importance of

constantly challenging how things are done, although he has never been in favour of changefor change’s sake, which he believes isdestabilising for employees. Managers, he iscertain, must never lose touch with the basics ofwhat makes the business tick. And he feels thatone way of making up for the lack of intimacy ina larger business is generating a sense ofexcitement amongst employees at being on ashared journey within a successful business,which helps to create confidence.

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Wernick Hire staff ata seminar in 2014.

David Wernick,Chairman,

Wernick Group.

An informal snap ofthree generations:(left to right) Simon Doran, Lionel Wernick,David Wernick andJonathan Wernick.

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Index

66


Note: page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. SW refers to Sam Wernick.

Alexander II 6Alexander III 6Algeria 33Amber brothers 17Armenia 33Ascension Island 34–5

Barton, Jack 34, 39Bates, Bill 25Beal School, Ilford 43Beale, Joe 44Belgium 28Bessant, Frank 38Billericay factory 14–18, 20, 21–2, 24–5, 26, 30–1, 32–3Bircham, Tony 39Bishops Park College, Clacton 54Borwell, George 40, 40Brownhills factory 19–20, 21–2, 25, 30–1, 33, 44, 45

Cavadasca, Doris 17Cavasdasca, John 16, 17, 33, 39Challenger Learning Centre, National Space ScienceCentre, Leicester 56, 56

Cleethorpes Zoo and Marineland cafeteria 19Clyst Heath primary school 60Coke Street 6, 7Craine, Graham 48

Dodd, Robbie 26Doran, Simon 63, 65Downes, Mr 15Duke Street 7

East End, of London 6–7, 9Europe 28

France 11, 28Freeman, Les 26

Germany 8, 11, 15, 28Gibson, Dennis 40Goldspink, Norman 34, 39Goodwin, Trevor 44Griffiths, Gary 38Griffiths, Ian 56

Hain, Peter 43Harper, Sylvia 25, 44, 55Hart, Brian 16Hayes Cottage Hospital 56, 57Heath, Ted 27Hillingdon Cycle Circuit, West London 59Hodges, Kath 50Hollyoak, Alan 25, 33, 44, 56Homer, Betty 34Hookes, Bob 39Hooks, Bob 32Howdle, Carol 25Humphreys, Brian 16, 17, 31, 31, 38, 38, 45Hunt, Edna 17, 18, 24, 25Hunt, Nathan 17Hunt, Ray 22, 31, 34, 38, 39, 40, 47

career 17–18, 31, 38Windsor Safari Park 25financial crisis 45joint chief executive 46–8galvanised steel-frames 53retirement 63

Hunt, Raymond (son of Ray) 17

Inaccessible Island 34Italy 33

Jackson, Richard 53Johns, Julian 41, 56Johns, Kenneth 40

Kenfig site 61, 65Kenny, Terry 34, 44Kensington Park Road, Notting Hill 9Kenyon, Paul 49King, Andy 63–4, 63Kirton, Peter 44

Linley, Viscount 25Loat, Joyce 44

MacAlpine, Sir Alfred 21MacMillan, Harold 20Marconi Radar Systems Centre, Chelmsford 27Margaret, Princess 25Mellon, John 33Middle East 28–30Monksdown County Primary School 55Muldoon, Liam 52Munro, Gregor 50

Neath 40Neath factory 42, 45, 53, 53, 55, 61, 61Newbury District (later West Berkshire) Council offices 53, 54Nicholls, Bill 44Nieman, Max 12, 13, 15, 18, 22, 23, 31, 38Nieman, Pat (Yetta) (née Wernick) 7, 12, 13, 22

Oswestry 9

Peacock, Harry 17, 31, 32, 33, 53Perry, Fred 11Plumbers Row, Whitechapel 7Poel, Pat 45Poland 6–7Potter, Steve 45–6, 48, 63, 63Prestwood Road, Wolverhampton 9Pridmore, Steve 32, 34, 39, 39, 47, 53Pritchard, Jeff 40

Reffell, Simon 40, 41, 42, 48, 53, 63Reynolds, Bill 25, 31Richards, Don 16, 31, 33, 34, 40Ruffles, Sid 26Russia 6, 8, 11, 56

Sampson, Brian 26Saudi Arabia 29Scotland 48–9Shaw, Eddie 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 48, 53, 63Shayler, Pat 50, 51

Shipton site 65Smart, Ronnie 25Smart Junior, Billy 25South Atlantic islands 34–5Spencer, Lady Diana 35Springett, Geoff 31Switzerland 28, 33Sylvester, Bill 25Sylvester, Garry 25, 33, 44, 56

Tanner, Peter 18–19, 35Taylor, Lord 41Thatcher, Mrs 27Thistlethwaite, Michael 63–4, 63Turner brothers 17

Wales, Prince of 35Warren, Carl 44Warwick Hospital 56, 58Waterloo Road, Wolverhampton 9–11, 9, 13–14,18–19, 20–2, 25

Watts, Barry 34, 39Webster, Margaret 44Wernick, Bertha 7, 9, 10, 10, 22Wernick, Big Solly (SW’s nephew) 7Wernick, David 38, 39, 40, 47, 50, 53, 64, 65

starts in business 26career 38Swiftplan 43financial crisis 44–5joint chief executive 46–8and acquisitions 50Wernick Event Hire 50–2freedom from shareholders 62–3business vision 64

Wernick, Dolly 23Wernick, Eileen 10, 11, 12, 13Wernick, Faye 25Wernick, Hetty 11Wernick, Issa 6Wernick, Joan 7Wernick, Jonathan 61–2, 65, 65


68

Wernick, Joseph (Joe) (SW’s son) 34, 40, 46birth 7early career 11–12, 13–14poultry sheds 16interest in staff 18, 33company structure 22, 23, 30, 38Swiftplan 40, 43financial crisis 45end of career 46

Wernick, Joseph (SW’s brother) 6–7, 9Wernick, Joseph (SW’s uncle) 6–7Wernick, Julian 31, 33, 38, 38, 45, 48Wernick, Lionel 16, 34, 39, 40, 46, 65

birth 7early life 9, 10early career 14, 15interest in staff 16–18company structure 22, 23, 38–9Windsor Safari Park 25European market 28Wickford factory 33Swiftplan 40, 43financial crisis 44–5company’s life president 46loyalty of Ray Hunt 47Hallam Hire 48and family gain outright control 62

Wernick, Miriam 6Wernick, Nathan (Nat) 11, 22

birth 7early life 11early career 13Billericay factory 14–15Suffolk Broilers 16interest in staff 18company structure 22, 23, 25export business 27–30

Wernick, Peter 22Wernick, Rebecca 6–7Wernick, Ruben 6Wernick, Sadie 7Wernick, Samuel (Sam) 7, 12, 21

early life and arrival in England 6–7First World War 8business growth 12–13starts in business 9–11staff outings 17character 19Brownhills factory 20uses consultants 21retirement 22entrepreneurial instincts and legacy 65

Wernick, Shanka 7Wernick, Solomon (Solly) 7, 10–11, 13, 20, 22–3, 23Wernick, Yetta see Nieman, Pat (Yetta) (née Wernick) Western General Hospital, Edinburgh isolation clinic 55Wickford factory 33, 44, 45, 53Wilkinson, Bill 31Wilkinson, John 17Wilks, Diane 44Wilson, Harold 24Windsor Safari Park 25Wolverhampton 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 23

see also Waterloo Road, WolverhamptonWood, Ron 44Woodward, Jack 18

Yates, Ben 44

Documents

80 Years of the The Wernick Group is one of the …...80 Years of the Wernick Group A Continuing Story of Growth and Success Nigel Watson Nigel Watson has been writing corporate histories