The market-leading customer service provided by Sheffield-based Ceratizit UK & Ireland has been enhanced with the appointment of Neville Frisby and Drew Pettifar.

Customer service and support has been privotal to Ceratizit UK & Ireland’s enduring success and as the UK manufacturing sector continues its recovery from the pandemic, it is now considered to be more important than ever. With this in mind, Ceratizit UK & Ireland has plans for significant growth in its technical sales and application sales teams in 2022, beginning with these first two appointments.

Brackley-based Neville ‘Nev’ Frisby joins the company as a technical sales engineer working across an area covering in part the northern home counties including ‘F1 Valley’. He brings with him extensive machining knowledge, especially with Ceratizit tooling, both from a machine shop management and machine operator perspective.

Having spent many years working in production management roles, Mr Frisby decided to change direction in 2015 and return to his roots setting and operating machines. He commenced manufacturing parts for a wide range of customers including F1 teams and supercar manufacturers.

He said: “I needed to recharge my batteries and make use of the expertise that I had in a different way. After almost seven years it was time for another change and having seen the opportunity at Ceratizit come up on social media, and with my knowledge of the company and its products, I think the transition will be relatively straightforward. It almost feels like coming back to a family — I know them so well and I can’t wait to get in front of customers.”

Meanwhile, Drew Pettifar is joining Ceratizit in the role of applications sales engineer. He will bring his wide-ranging knowledge of production engineering, across sectors including defence, motorsport and prototype manufacturing. After completing his apprenticeship, Mr Pettifar developed his skills setting and operating machines, before moving into more management-based roles in production engineering environments.

He will work with Ceratizit’s technical sales team to develop machining solutions for customers as well as providing day-to-day project support for a number of key accounts across the east of England with all of his customers situated within 2hr of his home in Buckinghamshire.

Mr Pettifar continued: “As someone who enjoys finding solutions to engineering questions, I am excited by the challenge of this new role. In my previous jobs I had to be customer-facing. The experience that gave me in relationship building, combined with my technical background should make the transition to applications support a fairly easy one.”

Ceratizit UK & Ireland’s managing director Tony Pennington concluded: “We are pleased to welcome Nev and Drew to the team as their skills and experience will add further value to our service and support network. As we progress through 2022, we will expand the sales and applications teams further and we have already highlighted new positions in Scotland, the North West and Midlands regions of England, which we will be recruiting for in the coming months.”