Meet the Team – Ian Newman

Name: Ian Newman
Position: Managing Director
Time at Corrotherm: 23 years
Interests and hobbies: Gardening, playing guitar

While every member of the Corrotherm team is key, Ian has played a huge role in pushing the company to where it is now. He joined Corrotherm from the very start in 1992 as Operations Manager and became Managing Director in 2006.

Using his detailed knowledge of the sector and the company’s customers, Ian has helped to drive Corrotherm in becoming one of the major players in the super alloy industry.

Before joining Corrotherm, Ian started out as an IT graduate from Southampton Institute, landing a role as Expeditor at Philips Cornes Projects Ltd in 1990.

Given the length of time that he has worked with Corrotherm, he has many fond memories, but it is the early days that stand out in particular: “I remember when the company had the vibe and feel of the high-tech startups you hear about today, and despite rapid expansion we have tried to keep to that principle for all staff who join us. We can’t recapture our youth any more, but we can stick to those principles.”

Ian enjoys the varied nature of his role, offering different challenges every day of the year, usually fuelled by strong tea (“the kind you can stand a teaspoon in!”) or an espresso on a bad day. At the moment, those challenges include “guiding Corrotherm through the change process to holding ISO9001, ISO14001 and OHSAS18001 certificates. For a company of our size, it’s a huge undertaking”. He also enjoys the process of watching the company’s successes in action: “Watching the parts of a larger or tricky project order come together on time, you can see all the pieces moving around the globe to arrive at a single point ready for dispatch.”

With so much experience in the industry, Ian has an in-depth knowledge of the products – he's especially impressed by the versatility of the popular INCONEL Alloy 625 – and the industry as a whole, including the challenges that it is facing. “There’s a lot of upheaval in the industry at the moment with oil prices sitting as they do,” Ian says. “However, new technologies, CSR concerns and cleaner energy technologies are going to have a big part to play in all of this and shape the future of the industry.” That future includes finding ways to adapt existing technologies to cope with “harsher environments to extract oil efficiently and in an environmentally-conscious way”.

Away from his day job, Ian has myriad other talents. He is well known at the in-house monthly curry club for his lime pickle, and on Saturdays can be found pottering around the house or vegetable garden doing, in his words, “battle with the wrong insects and blight. I’ve got a lot of time for Monty Don these days and his sage advice!” He is also a capable guitar player, and used to be in a band. However, it’s not something that he gets the opportunity to break out that often: “It’s a long while since the Gibson has been used for anything more than odd Led Zeppelin riff. Obviously not Stairway to Heaven; it’s banned in my house, as it is most guitar shops…”

If you would like to talk to a member of the Corrotherm team, you can contact us here, or telephone our UK head office on: +44 (0)23 8074 8100.