UK apprentice competition: The search continues

Congratulations to Jake Thompson of Leicester based Central Grinding Services, winner of October’s UK Manufacturing Apprentice of the Month! Jake picks up this months prize to go with the £100 Amazon Vouchers.

He also now qualifies for the AMI UK Manufacturing Apprentice of the year. The competition has been launched to find and recognise the very best apprentices currently working within the UK manufacturing industry by AMI, a web design & marketing agency that specialises in supporting UK manufacturing companies.

(l-r) Apprentice, Jake Thompson with Engineering Director, Chris Windram / Picture: AMI

Jake said: “I would like to thank AMI for this award and I am over the moon with my award and voucher. I really enjoy working for Central Grinding and since I first started I have always had the help when its been needed. I always enjoy learning more and expanding my skills.”

Jake was put forward for the award by Engineering Director, Chris Windram. He added, “Jake has a good attitude towards work and always gives 110% and always hungry to learn more, this award is great for him as it rewards him for his hard work”.

Jake started with Central Grinding Services straight from leaving college and has made a massive impact to the company since starting. Jake has passed all his exams and picked up the operating systems on the company’s Jones & Shipman CNC machines far quicker than expected.

Central Grinding Services had a job recently which required using two different machines. Jake came up with a idea how they could modify the program and do the whole operation in one go on the CNC. Engineering Director, Chris tried the idea and it was successful and cut the job time down by 40% which is great for production.

Central Grinding Services are big advocates of using apprentices in the company, “We use apprentices as we have had great success from using them, We are looking to bring in a new apprentice every 2 years now to bring some young blood into the engineering trade, a lot of grinding company are shutting down due to staff retiring but we have got a lot of younger workers trained up as we are always looking into the future and always expanding the company,” said Chris Windram, Engineering Director.

Central Grinding Services is a family run precision grinding company providing high quality, high precision services since the company was established in 1995, based in Leicester.