Goodbye and Thanks to… Malcolm Downie

As many of you may be aware, Malcolm Downie, one of the stalwarts of Texon Non Woven Ltd plant at Skelton, in the UK, has decided to retire.
Malcolm first came to Skelton back in 1990 having previously worked for, amongst others, Johnson & Johnson where he was involved in R & D on a range of medical products.

He put these skills to good use in the footwear industry when he joined Emhart Footwear Materials Group at Leicester in the UK in 1987, before being transferred to Skelton three years later. “When I first arrived at Skelton I helped to start up a product development group”, recalls Malcolm, “we carried out trials and looked at ‘productionising’ development products which were coming out of the lab in Leicester”.

“Over my years here the company has gone through various name and ownership changes; Emhart became Black and Decker, then BUSM and now thankfully, Texon!”

When the Leicester facility closed down in the 1990’s all manufacturing was moved up to Skelton. Malcolm’s various job roles during this period included production manager (for fabric making), responsibility for new extrusion and hot melt coating areas, and technical manager with factory-wide responsibility for production support, specifically ‘quality’.

If the 90’s were busy, the new millennium bought even more work to his desk, as Malcolm explained, “During the early 2000’s I took on the ISO 9001 accreditation responsibility, becoming a trained auditor. I also helped develop a comprehensive test schedule for ‘Restricted Substance Testing’ which met the requirements of all our customers. It is pleasing to note that this test has become somewhat of an industry standard”, he added.

Malcolm has continued in this role right up to his retirement and has also managed to find time to investigate customer complaints, edit an internal newsletter, ‘Skelton News’, serve on the works council and become a trained ‘environmental auditor’.

Everyone at Texon would like to wish Malcolm all the very best for the future and we all hope that he will pop in from time to time to say hello to all his friends at Texon in Skelton. Happy retirement Malcolm!