A life in coating: Liz Faulkner, managing director of Color-Board looks back at a family business that has been going since 1870

摘要

52 years my family have been working from our 10,000 square foot factory in Waltham Abbey of which I've been involved for 22 years. When I first came to the business the staff met me with mixed feelings, a girl, of city background, bosses daughter, all the normal obstacles old established employees have anxieties over, and to Color-Boards credit staff turnover was minimal, in fact it was joked you died before you retired at Color-Board such was the level of loyalty. In my 22 years of service things have changed, labour intensity on the factory floor being substantially reduced whilst technology in the office enables me to get done in a day what may have taken our bookkeeper several (days of creativity with a fountain pen and without the aid of calculators and lap tops. The nature of the work however has remained completely unchanged. Curtain Coating in the early 1970's was big business, with multiple staff and staggered breaks 500 sheets of 8'×4' hardboard could be run through in a day, the panels were coated and cooked so that they could immediately be palletized ready for despatch the following morning. This was modernisation facilitated by the introduction of the existing line, brushing, hoovering, curtain coating, radient gas fired heating and a cooling tunnel installed by my father in 1970.