Akzo Nobel, which makes about 50 million litres of Dulux paint in the UK every year, has joined forces with Northumberland College in order to upskill its workforce.

Having already created over 160 skilled jobs since opening its ‘state of the art’ production unit in Ashington in 2017 — as well as over 100 in the local supply chain — the company has decided to back this up with a new apprenticeship scheme.

After looking at the training programmes that were available locally, it approached Northumberland College about the possibility of creating a bespoke programme that would cater to its unique training needs.

Jeff Hope, head of the manufacturing unit at Akzo Nobel (www.akzonobel.com), said: “Northumberland College and Akzo Nobel have collaborated to develop an apprenticeship scheme that will support future manufacturing excellence in our new facility.

"Creating the bespoke scheme involved consultation from the very early stages between our on-site engineers and the lecturers and staff at the college, who brought much creativity and enthusiasm for the scheme to our site.

"We have been able to design a bespoke apprenticeship scheme that incorporates learning about our site-specific processes as part of the curriculum delivered by the college, to ensure that our employees have all of the knowledge and skills they need to succeed.”

Sara Sawyer, business development manager at Northumberland College, said: “The scheme has given the college the freedom to develop a new programme that really embraces the need to train the next generation of engineers within their specialist roles — without some of the limitations of previous curriculum programmes.

“This allows us to be much more flexible in working with local employers to address skills gaps.”