New chief executive takes over at Black Country engineering group

A new chief executive takes office today at Black Country engineering group, Castings.

Adam Vicary has succeeded David Gawthorpe who officially retired from the Brownhills-based group at the end of last month.

Mr Vicary was the former managing director of Castings Brownhills and has been shadowing Mr Gawthorpe for the past six months.

The group said the appointment of Mr Vicary was line with the business’ succession planning.

Mr Vicary will be looking rebuilt revenue and profits, both of which dipped during the group’s first half due to a softening in demand from one of the4 group’s main customers.

For the six months to September 30, 2016 sales dipped to £57.9m (H1 2015: £65m) and pre-tax profit was £7.08m (H1 2015: £9.51m).

The reduced demand resulted in lower foundry sales volumes.

Chairman Brian Cooke said at the of the group’s interim results in November that the group’s machining business had seen a significant reduction in revenue following the end of a major contract.

He said the introduction of replacement work remained on course for 2017/18 onwards, but the pre-production costs associated with this work would impact the current financial year and while it did not anticipate any significant further reductions in output, it did not expect to see any improvement for the remainder of the financial year.