British Sugar plc – Graduate employer Microsite
– graduate experiences 2
British Sugar plc – graduate experiences 2
Graduate employer highlights
- Employees:
- 1001+
- Graduate job vacancies:
- 1 - 10
- Regions
- East of England
- Minimum degree:
- 2:1
- Graduate jobs available:
- Opportunities in Engineering & manufacturing, Finance & banking, Administration/management
- Package:
- £24,000 - £26,000
Name: Neil Griffiths
Age: 32
Job title: Site Safety Co-ordinator
University attended: University of Surrey
Degree obtained: BEng Environmental Chemical Engineering
Neil Griffiths spent the first year of his training programme at Newark before being appointed as Team Leader at York. Since then he has taken on various roles including a secondment at another ABF company.
Invaluable Training
The graduate scheme is incredibly comprehensive and allows an opportunity to gain full hands-on experience very quickly – within six months I had a good understanding of the whole of the Newark factory. This experience is invaluable when you become a team leader and have to respond to massive amounts of information coming through from the lab, as well as being responsible for a team, site safety, the environmental performance, sugar quality and production.
Open to ideas
British Sugar is very open about listening to new ideas, even from a graduate trainee. In my first year I was responsible for designing and installing a £10,000 filtration project. If there’s a capital project you can justify with financial analysis, you can design and implement it.
Wide-ranging opportunities
Since my first appointment, there have been many opportunities available to me that I could not have envisaged when I joined the graduate programme only six years ago. I was promoted to the role of Beet End Operations Engineer, then, due to the fact that British Sugar is part of the larger ABF Group, I was lucky enough to spend time at another company on a three-month secondment. Even during this short period, I was able to make a significant impact.
I then returned to York, initially as the Animal Feeds Area Manager and then moved into a role as York’s Site Safety Co-ordinator. I am now continuing this role at our Wissington factory near Kings Lynn in Norfolk, where I operate by influence, so I have been able to develop my autonomy skills as well as my communication and leadership experience. It is great to be employed in such a developmental role within the organisation.