Opportunity Knox
AQUACULTURE is now Garware’s largest business and it all began with Scottish net specialist W&J Knox in 2004. That year, the current Knox chairman, Jim Traynor, and his colleague Roger Dehany put together a successful management buyout of their company and decided to outsource net making.
Knox, based in Kilbirnie, Ayrshire, has been in the net business since 1778 and now more than 90 per cent of its work is in aquaculture.
To keep pace with demand and with the latest innovations in materials, the company formed an association with Garware.
Dehany, who retired from Knox three years ago, explained to Fish Farmer: ‘We met the chairman and the managing director at a fishing exhibition in Glasgow in 2004 when we were progressing the management buyout. And as a consequence of that we moved our Raschel knitting machines to Wai, a hell of a big move. They would run them 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They are such a big outfit, the manpower is unbelievable. The volumes have increased so much, we wouldn’t have been able to keep up if we hadn’t gone with Garware.’
Vayu Garware said: ‘It’s been a wonderful partnership that we’ve had and that has taken us into aquaculture. From there we moved into Norway. The Knox team has helped on so many of the developments with us and they take us to sites, and we work together. The interaction is seamless, that kind of partnership really helps in all this. If you don’t have that it’s very difficult.’
Chairman Jim Traynor, managing director Dave Hutchens and commercial director Finlay Oman make annual visits to the factories in Wai and Pune to discuss customer requirements and work on new product innovations.
‘Garware have a world leading research and development team,’ said Hutchens. ‘Knox are often used as a sounding board to assess the viability of Garware’s development products, providing practical feedback from trials in the field.’
Oman added: ‘Knox are in a privileged position to be marketing Garware’s industry driven products in the UK and Ireland .’
Through the conduit of Garware’s UK based Kanwal Malik, Oman said they work 52 weeks in the year ‘with not only the sales team, but the technical experts to enhance the value to the end users’.
‘From the top of the company down to the people on the shop floor, these guys are determined to provide the salmon farmers with a value proposition that not only increases the security and health of their stock, but also their overall costs of production. The pace of change is relentless, they never rest on their laurels; as their competitors are playing catch up, Garware are already well down the road to the new improved version of their market leading rope, netting and coated fabric products.’