The Tech-Board Story (Stranger then fiction)

The true story of the most dramatic "Greenfield Startup" failure in British manufacturing history

In 1984 "UK Hardboard", then Britain’s only hardboard manufacturing plant, based in Sittingbourne, Kent, was looking for a new Managing Director. Step forward Malcolm Graham. After a lifetime working in other manufacturing industries, this was another challenge in a fine career.

What is Hardboard?

Hardboard is the thin wood panel, usually flat on one side, a criss-cross pattern on the reverse, that you find in the back of flat-pack wardrobes and in the bottom of flat-pack desk drawers. It’s made by taking waste wood, grinding it up into fibres, adding water and glue, then pressing it together in an enormous press.

Kemsley Mill

UK Hardboard was located in the middle of Kemsley Mill, a huge development of paper mills that had stood there for 50-60 years. The hardboard mill originally used the waste wood form the paper making process and shared some facilities with the paper mills, such as power generation and canteen.

Unions

Traditionally the hardboard mill was the dumping ground for all the more "difficult" employees and management from the paper mills. When Malcolm took over there were more than ten unions represented in the 100-odd workers

The Plant

The manufacturing plant was 50 years old. It had been poorly maintained and was prone to frequent failure. There was years worth of what could only be described as "gunge and goo" up high on the walls and ceiling. No one knew what it was or where it had come from. It was similar to a Victorian workhouse.

Process Control

There was no process control. It was typical for the refiner operators, which produced the wood fibres to test their suitability by taking a sample in their hand, squeezing out the water and verifying their suitability to make good hardboard by smelling, and even tasting, the wood fibres. A " black art" indeed.

Modernisation

Whilst trying to rationalize the unions Malcolm embarked on finding a new management team to assist him in modernizing the plant. To this end he employed three experienced engineers.

Bob Cox

Bob came with many year’s experience from Blue Circle cement and spent a lot of time upgrading the plant’s outdated wiring. (where are they now?)

Graeme Leno

Graeme was the Mechanical engineer who always seemed to be rebuilding the press. (where are they now?)

Sean Leach

Sean was the Chief Engineer who had spent many years working in South Africa. Although this came into question one day when Malcolm was showing a South African around the plant – Sean greeted him in Afrikaans. At the end of the tour the visitor thanked Malcolm for the tour and said "I understood everything today except one of the people I met – was he speaking Portuguese?" Sean had a penchant for strong cheese. (where are they now?)

Teaching Company Scheme

Malcolm also instigated a development program with academic support through a Government funded "Teaching Company Scheme". The scheme itself is still going, and over the years has done some fine work. Through the scheme at UK Hardboard 4 graduates were employed to each perform two-year projects. They were:

Guy Spaven

Writter of this stuff ? – the project was to design a system to automatically measure and control the refining process. (where are they now?)

Hazel Egner (affectionately known as "the nest of vipers")

Hazel came from Bangor University, and her project was to mathematically model the hardboard process (where are they now?)

Austin Slater (affectionately known as "Usti")

Electronic Engineer, whose project was to look at the energy consumption of the paper mill (Austin will appear in several later sections and where are they now?)

Iain Martin (affectionately known as "a tart")

Mechanical Engineer, whose project was to look at condition monitoring of bearings. (where are they now?)

Jim

The only other people we really remember from UK Hardboard, are Jim and Dave. Jim who used to mix phenol formaldehyde, with a big stick…(where are they now?)

Dave

Ex-Marine bloke, big moustache, well known for dramatically over-engineering metal structures. (where are they now?)

The Demise of UK Hardboard

In 1989 UK hardboard was shut down. Why? Well, the annual electricity bill for the hardboard plant suddenly increased by several hundred percent, thus making the plant unprofitable.

During the year in which the electricity costs sky-rocketed:

• No more energy was consumed, compared with the previous year
• The price of energy did not change

Shortly after the closure of the Hardboard Plant, the remaining paper mills at Kemsley were sold to New Zealand company, Fletcher Challenge. The more cynical of the redundant UK Hardboard employees looked back and wondered whether the whole thing was a ploy to make the paper mills look more profitable than they actually were, by hiding some of the fixed costs in the Hardboard plant. But we shall never know….

A New Hardboard Plant

Malcolm had already been planning a new Hardboard Production Facility, to replace the ageing Kemsley plant. However, the sudden closure of the plant spurred him on in his quest to raise sufficient money to build a new plant. This website is the story of what happened next….