Veteran’s vision on 45 years’ change

HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, recently met with the acknowledged expert on water hygiene and safety issues for a look around the company’s Cheltenham headquarters, where the ‘voice of Rada’ was happy to share some of the changes he has seen during an extremely varied career, explain some of the innovations incorporated into washroom and showering products targeted at healthcare applications under the Rada brand name, and offer his thoughts on future trends.

Roy Minett, currently the longestserving employee on Kohler Mira’s Cheltenham site, began with a little bit of historical background on Kohler Mira, Rada’s American parent company, Kohler Co, and on Rada itself. In the UK today, he explained, Kohler Mira employs around 1,000 staff, of which around 700 are Cheltenham-based. Of these, over 100 work full-time on new product development. He said: “We became part of Kohler in 2001. Since then, our parent company has invested significantly every year into new product development and R&D; in fact Kohler invests over 90 per cent of its profits back into its businesses.” Roy Minett explained that the business that is Kohler Mira today was founded in 1921 in London by Messrs Crosweller and Walker, beginning life as Walker Crosweller, initially as an importer of industrial metering and measuring equipment. Ten years later, the company became the distributor of the ‘Leonard’ thermostatic mixing valve, and was granted manufacturing rights as well, making a move to its current manufacturing facility in Cheltenham necessary.

Succession planning goes awry