People: Maven Capital Partners; West Midlands Gigafactory; Transport for West Midlands

Maven Capital Partners has announced that Carl Edgehill and Steve Shuker have joined the company’s Birmingham team.

Edgehill joins Maven as a portfolio director and Shuker joins as an investment manager.

Shuker has joined Maven to support businesses with their growth plans and growth funding requirements. Prior to this, he spent many years working with large and medium sized businesses for Lloyds, Bank of Scotland, and Barclays. He brings more than three decades’ experience to the Birmingham investment team and will be driving the deployment of funding across the West Midlands.

Edgehill also brings a wealth of portfolio experience, having previously spent time working for Heineken and Santander. He also co-owned a business that supported SMEs with cost savings and strategic financial planning. He will work alongside the investment team to further improve the ongoing support provided to businesses that have received finance through the MEIF.

Richard Blount, investment director for Maven, said: “I’m delighted to welcome Carl and Steve to the West Midlands team. This additional investment reaffirms our commitment and continued growth to provide unrivalled experience and support to businesses across the region. The Midlands Engine Investment Fund was set up to help regional SMEs to gain the funding they require to grow, and I know that Carl and Steve will further add to the wealth of experience across our existing team in delivering on that goal.”

Mark Wilcockson, senior investment manager at the British Business Bank, added: “The MEIF has partnered with Maven since 2017, and continues to support the growth of the region’s SMEs. The MEIF works with fund managers to ensure the potential of the region’s businesses is reached through funding and we look forward to continuing this important work with Maven with the new team in place.”

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West Midlands Gigafactory joint venture has announced the appointment of leading EV recruitment CEO and founder Steve Doyle as the project’s skills ambassador.

He will be engaged on a consultancy basis with his main focus still being CEO of EVera Recruitment, Europe’s only dedicated Battery and EV recruiter.

Already an ambassador for STEM (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) Learning, and PhD Careers Advisor for The Faraday Institution, Doyle has over 25 years of experience in recruitment and education and will take on leading the skills and recruitment strategy for the joint venture.

He set up the UK’s first EV and Hybrid Recruitment Division in 2008 and he has become the UK’s leading EV recruiter, building teams from major OEMs to start-up tech companies.

Since turning his attention to the battery sector in 2017, he recognised gigafactory recruitment to be far more complex and challenging and has devised a new recruitment strategy, attracting skills from parallel industries for battery manufacturing.

The UK has unrivalled access to academic powerhouses and skills, and the gigafactory site in Coventry is situated in the epicentre of the UK’s automotive industry where more than 800,000 people are employed in relevant sectors such as EV and Battery and chemical engineering and 3.7 million people are of working age. The West Midlands has the highest projected growth of the working-age population in the UK.

Doyle said: “The world is being electrified and our workforce needs to be.

“In an industry facing skills shortages, we need to implement new recruitment models that can overcome this and succeed – quickly. The skill sets within the gigafactory space are often transferable from the automotive, pharmaceutical or food industries.

“For instance, if you break the production line down into stages and look at the lithium powder mixing section, you quickly realise that it’s very similar to what Nestlé is doing with its KitKat line. Coating sections are very similar to processes in the printing industry. And then for the electrolyte-filling section of the production line, I found a company that was putting soya sauce into sachets for sushi restaurants. These are near-neighbour skills that can be usefully applied for batteries.”

Mike Murray, West Midlands Gigafactory project director, said: “Based in the heart of the UK’s manufacturing sector – West Midlands Gigafactory is placed in the Skills Capital of the UK with unrivalled access to current and future automotive talent. The site will create up to 6,000 new highly skilled jobs directly and thousands more in the supply chain, with the potential for 60 GWh per annum.

“It is vital at this stage of our project to assign a leading industry skills ambassador to support the success of our recruitment process in a market facing a skills shortage. We are thrilled to have Steve’s guidance and wealth of knowledge to educate the next phase of the project as we look to secure what is most important – the people.”

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Mal Drury-Rose has been appointed to the twin role of director of rail for Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) and executive director of the West Midlands Rail Executive (WMRE).

The job involves leading on delivery of region’s Rail Investment Strategy, including development of new stations and services and overseeing the West Midlands Railway franchise.

He brings more than 30 years’ experience to the WMRE and TfWM having held senior roles with Virgin Trains, First Great Western, National Express, the Rail Delivery Group and having spent more than ten years as head of rail with the Welsh Government.

His most recent role was as assistant director for Rail with the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority which involved leading the recovery from Covid-19 with Merseyrail and working to progress the city region’s rail infrastructure programme and long term rail strategy.

He joins the West Midlands at a time of change and expansion for the railway network as the region prepares for the arrival of HS2. Construction work is under way on three new railway stations on the Camp Hill line in Birmingham, two new stations on the Walsall to Wolverhampton line, plus a sixth station at Aldridge is being planned. There are also plans for further new stations in the pipeline.

Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands and WMRE chair, said: “Mal’s track record working across a range of public and private sector rail organisations makes him a compelling appointment.

“With work underway right across our region – including getting five new railway stations open – he has a busy in tray ready to welcome him on his first day at the office.

“So I’m pleased that – in Mal – we have a high calibre leader to help us deliver on our ambitions and give local people the railway service they deserve.”