Harwin, a hi-rel connector and SMT board hardware manufacturer, received an official visit to its Portsmouth factory on Friday, 30th May, from the Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire, Dame Mary Fagan, DCVO, JP. Dame Mary was welcomed on arrival by Harwin chairman, Damon de Laszlo, before meeting Harwin’s Design and Engineering teams.
Dame Mary was then taken on a tour of Harwin’s factory, where its high-reliability connectors, including the triple award-winning Gecko G125-Series are manufactured, as well as its EZ-Boardware PCB hardware products. Accompanied by Damon de Laszlo, Dame Mary stopped to talk with technicians involved in the many processes involved in producing the company’s connectors which are used in applications as diverse as medical devices, satellites, aircraft and high-end autosport including Indy cars.
One of the highlights of the visit was a certificate presentation ceremony – Dame Mary congratulated Andrew McGuinness, Sam Bennett and Ethan Mew, who have just completed four-year advanced level apprenticeships and presented them with their certificates. Harwin is very proactive in encouraging young people into engineering and has been offering apprenticeships for the past ten years.
De Laszlo commented: “It was a real pleasure to introduce Dame Mary to our staff – she is immensely engaging and was keen to ask everyone about their job and understand the manufacturing processes we use. For our apprentices, being presented with their completion certificates by Dame Mary was a thrill and recognition of four years’ hard work and study. At Harwin we value our apprentices very highly – they all hold important roles within the company and have the opportunity to be sponsored through higher education including foundation degrees in either engineering or business management. About 10% of our workforce are apprentices, and many who began their careers with a Harwin apprenticeship ten years ago now hold key roles in the business.”
Dame Mary also officially inaugurated a £500,000 Bruderer automatic stamping press which the company took delivery of only last month. The machine is the first one of its kind in the world and can be used for both development and production.
