Before founding Spring Rise Associates Tom was the Chief Executive Officer at Sterecycle/STE, a waste recycling and clean energy company which he joined in January 2010.  He was previously Managing Director of KemFine UK Ltd., a specialty chemicals business with approximately £45 million in revenue and 262 staff.  Prior to KemFine, Tom led the spin-off of Avecia’s Fine Chemicals, a business unit of Avecia Ltd., into the KemFine group and had previously been Vice President of the Fine Chemicals business at Avecia, a global company with sales of £442 million backed by private equity funds Investcorp Bank B.S.C. and Cinven Group Limited.  Tom was Manufacturing Director at Avecia where he was responsible for 12 manufacturing sites in five countries and also served as a Trustee Director of Avecia’s Pension Scheme.  He was located in Delaware, USA for a period as Head of Zeneca Engineering and spent 16 years working with Imperial Chemical Industries plc, one of the world’s largest chemical businesses, including roles in engineering design and site management and finally heading up an engineering technology group.  Tom has been acting Chair of the Chemical Sciences Scotland, Industry Leadership Group and previously served as the Chair of the Scottish Enterprise Forth Valley Board. Tom was appointed to Scotland's Just Transition Commission, 2019 to 2021 and to the UK Government's Council for Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage in May 2018.  He was a non-executive director of  NECCUS,  an industry led alliance developing carbon capture, usage and storage in Scotland. Tom is a graduate of Queens University, Belfast with a degree in engineering.

A range of assignments have included:

 

Life and Chemical Sciences Scotland:

Developing a leadership programme for emerging leaders in the Life and Chemical Sciences industry sector in Scotland.

 

Pharmaceuticals :

A supplier of registered starting materials to the pharmaceutical majors found itself loosing orders due to changes in preferred supplier policy. Consultancy support was provided to help the client improve market penetration and gain new customers. This involved radically changing the company’s way of selling its services.

Chemicals: 

Operational due diligence for a US private equity company expanding its operations in Europe. This involved visiting a number of manufacturing sites in different countries.

Technical due diligence for a UK venture capital fund considering investment in a start-up company wishing to build a full scale process plant for extracting polymers from naturally occurring materials.

A large European chemicals manufacturer needed to restructure operations on one of its UK sites.  Support was given in developing options for alternative use of its facilities and land.

Renewable Energy:

Consultancy support has been provided to a number of Waste to Energy projects in the UK.

Safety Culture:

Support has been given to consultancy business, JOMC (now "TRIBE intelligent culture change")*, who provide safety culture change programmes to a number of organisations in the UK, Europe (including Russia), Middle-east, Africa and Asia. Spring Rise has provided workshop facilitation at senior executive and board level.

Soil and Groundwater Pollution:

Business strategy support was provided to a business that has developed a novel technology for the remediation of polluted land and groundwater. This addressed materials that are very challenging to remediate in a reasonable timescale and the new technology offered a more timely solution to this problem. The support involved building a business proposition that could attract investment funding.

 

* use this link to go to the website JOMC