kp and me: Paul Rawlings

My family has worked at kp for three generations

Function: Global launch manager, Trays from Bukowice, Poland

I’ve worked here all my life and my connection with the company goes back as far as I can remember – before I was born, in fact. We call kp the family firm because we’ve had Rawlings working at kp for over 50 years.

My dad, uncle and cousin all worked at kp’s Featherstone plant in the UK. Dad started as a machine operator in 1973, when it was part of Linpac, and I grew up with him doing night shifts.

Back then people didn’t commute. They lived near their work, and within five miles of each other. We had a community, established around the plant. It was part of my childhood and we regarded it as the family firm, which is why I started there in 1989 as a 16-year-old apprentice.

I was lucky enough to be trained by great craftsmen. They didn’t just teach you how something worked. They taught you how everything worked.

We were trained as multi-skilled apprentices, responsible for every machine and process in a specific area of the plant: electronics, mechanics, the lot. It was the best apprenticeship going.

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And it’s the training that got me where I am today. I’m the global launch manager for trays, and it’s a job I wouldn’t be able to do without having worked across so many different parts of the company.

I’m a link between the engineers who develop the products and the commercial side of the business that gets them on sale and delivered to customers. We want the time from design to launch to be as short as possible.

I can do this because I know how the factories work, how the machines in the factories work and how the people on the machines work. And I understand the commercial requirements of the business.

I was lucky enough to be trained by great craftsmen. They didn’t just teach you how something worked. They taught you how everything worked.

Paul Rawlings

Global launch manager, Trays from Bukowice, Poland

I’m in the middle of two parts of kp’s business, and it’s how I’ve worked for years. When I was installing machines in factories all over the world, I’d wear dress shirts with short sleeves and a jacket over the top so I could go from meetings to the factory, take the jacket off and get on the tools.

That was when I first went to Poland. The plan was to build a new factory. I landed at a military airport with a shed for a customs building, we drove for an hour through the countryside and arrived at a crossroads. The guy I was with pointed to a field and said “that’s the place.”

In 2002 Poland was very different to how it is now. No-one spoke English, the airports were difficult and the roads poor. The country was still emerging from the post-communist period, it wasn’t yet an EU member and standards were much lower than I was used to. Building a factory from scratch to meet European standards was tricky.

But the people of Poland are early adopters of new technology. Many people who grew up under communism have embraced progress – in my rural village we have better high-speed internet than in most of the UK – and the country has developed hugely. I love its fiercely passionate people, its independent spirit and how so many of my Polish colleagues have risen to senior positions within kp.

Now the third generation of my family has just started at kp. My eldest son, Jack, is about to start training as a multi-skilled Operator at Featherstone, where I began my journey 33 years ago and where my dad worked for 37 years.

After working on the Bukowice build, I couldn’t leave it alone and went back to work with the general manager, Tomasz Leopold, to get it up and running. I worked alongside him for 2.5 years and the place got under my skin. He was a great colleague and I learnt a huge amount.

It came as a huge shock when he was killed in a car crash, as was finding out I was needed to take over his job – literally the next day. I’d helped design and build the plant, so I knew it inside out. But now I was going to have to take his place as operations manager, running the entire site.

I hadn’t done any management, my Polish wasn’t great – I needed a translator for some conversations – and I immediately had start looking after 120 people. But it was the catalyst that made me stay, and 20 years later I’m still in Poland.

Now the third generation of my family has just started at kp. My eldest son, Jack, is about to start training as a multi-skilled Operator at Featherstone, where I began my journey 33 years ago and where my dad worked for 37 years.

Jack’s 23 and most people his age don’t want to work in factories. But as my career has shown, the possibilities are endless and you can move to other areas of the business if that becomes your aim. kp’s business is so diverse that you can plot myriad ways through it to get where you want to be.

Jack and Paul Rawlings