Making up for past job losses

Nov 7 2007 By The Journal

Tyneside & Northumberland winner John Clough is chief executive and founder of Eaga plc, Newcastle

JOHN Clough pledged he would build his own company to compensate for 300 jobs lost when the coke works he managed on South Tyneside closed. That was 17 years ago.

Today his company, Eaga, employs more than 10 times that number – 3,500 in the UK, Ireland, India and Canada. It’s a FTSE-250 company with a £500m capitalisation and a £500m turnover that may double within three years.

Eaga is what John calls a “prime provider in green support service, delivering energy efficiency, environmental and social inclusion solutions”.

There are only a few such firms in the UK, and Eaga leads.

It is also in the minority of British partnership companies that are more than half owned by employees.

Eaga has improved life in more than five million vulnerable homes around the UK alone. It has saved over half a million pounds of carbon emissions since 2000, to the good of the environment.

Mr Clough holds an MBE and lives at Hexham.

RUNNER-UP

Ian Gillespie, founder and managing director of Fone Logistics, Cramlington.

Ian Gillespie shocked his father when he entered the family business.

Rookie though he might be, he said he wanted to sell car phones rather than cars from the Station Garage at Blyth.

Dad was sceptical. It was the 1980s. But, sure enough, phone sales were soon bringing in more business than the sale and hire of cars. Diversification went on from there.

This year, Fone Logistics has been the highest climber among the North-East’s Top 250 Companies. It is also one of the region’s fastest growing companies in the official rankings. Fone Logistics as it is now, started in 1996, and today it distributes, services and repairs mobile phones. Building on relationships made with all five of the network mobile providers, it has come to be one of the leading providers of airtime and mobile handsets to the UK’s independent dealer community.

Today the business employs 176 people and enjoys revenues of around £108m.

RUNNER-UP

Steve Hodgson, owner, Hodgson Newcastle, Silverlink, North Tyneside.

Steve Hodgson has developed a small family business into a multi-million pound car dealership that this year has entered the North-East Top 250.

The company runs Toyota, Suzuki and Mazda dealerships in North Tyneside, and a Toyota franchise in Gateshead, where a second franchise is also planned.

Constant reinvestment into the business has played a major part in the creation of year on year growth.

More than £10.5m has gone into developing dealerships so far on the two sites, and a further£3m this year is going into the MetroCentre site at Gateshead, where an eight-storey tower block is envisaged.

The company goes back to 1959 when Mr Hodgson’s father, Les, took over a bankrupt filling station in Seghill.

From 1992, Steve established the firm in its modern format, relocating to Silverlink.

He took the firm to a record year in 2006 with more than 4,500 cars sold.

The firm employs 140 people. Sales of £75m are expected next year.