Nicklin has made two significant senior appointments as the business continues to strengthen its operational capability and long-term resilience, ensuring it has the right leadership in place to support performance today while building a platform for sustainable growth.
Martin Watt has joined the company as Operations Director, taking a seat on the senior management team, while Jon Bryan joins as Quality, Health, Safety and Environment (QHSE) Manager. Both bring decades of manufacturing experience, and the impact of their expertise is already being felt across the business, particularly in the way we are sharpening focus, improving consistency and reinforcing standards.
Together, Martin and Jon are helping to lead the company’s drive to achieve operational excellence while delivering significant sales growth. These are not competing priorities; a well-run, safe and disciplined operation creates the stability, quality and responsiveness customers rely on, while growth creates the headroom to invest further in our people, systems and future capacity.
To support this, we have set clear goals and expectations that guide our decisions and actions across the business. At the centre of this is a renewed commitment to a safety-first culture. Nothing we do is more important than the health and safety of our people, and every task, process and decision must reflect that priority.
Jon Bryan explained: “In a manufacturing environment, safety has to be the starting point for everything – not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it sets the tone for the standards we expect across the board.
“When people feel safe, supported and properly trained, they work with more confidence, take more pride in what they do and look out for one another, and that is when performance improves.
“Our focus is on building a culture where safety is second nature, where everyone understands their role in keeping themselves and their colleagues safe, and where good practice is recognised and reinforced. When you create that shared sense of responsibility, you strengthen teamwork, you raise quality, and you build the kind of disciplined, motivated operation that can keep improving and keep growing.”
“In a tightening regulatory environment, compliance is non-negotiable. It protects our colleagues, supports our customers, and safeguards the long-term sustainability of the business. Importantly, this focus is already translating into results, with no working days lost on the shop floor in 2026 due to accidents.”
As part of strengthening culture and recognising performance, the business has also introduced an Employee of the Month scheme, celebrating team members who go the extra mile and reinforcing the behaviours that support continuous improvement.
These appointments represent an important step forward for Nicklin, adding leadership capacity and ensuring the right foundations are in place to deliver safely, consistently and successfully over the long term.
