From soap in the city to consumer products leader

Sep 3 2009 by Karen Dent, The Journal

From its roots in a soap company founded in 1837 to its current leading research and development role, Karen Dent explores Procter & Gamble's long association with the North East.

NTC has 320 full-time staff and there are usually around 70 other people on site, who are split between contractors, outsourcing workers, students and other temporary staff.

Mr Bragg says the numbers are likely to remain at the same level, despite the effects of the global economic downturn.

He said: “P&G, with the recession, is under a reasonable amount of cost pressure. But it prides itself on not making knee-jerk reactions on cutting R&D.

“Newcastle only does R&D work – everyone is a scientist or an engineer in some capacity.”

That work includes developing new products – which could take five years from start to finish – to tweaking and improving existing brands, a process that can take as little as a few months.

“We also have product launches coming up at least somewhere around the world,” said Mr Bragg.

One of the benefits of testing new products is that staff can bring in their washing – and may have their clothes cleaned in washing machines from the US or the Middle East.

The site’s importance and the quality of its training means it attracts people from around the world.

“I think everyone recognises that NTC is a very good place for training high quality people,” said Mr Bragg.

“NTC is a net exporter of talent; we usually recruit more people than we need.

“We do a lot of work that’s considered as being pretty good with academics and industry. The funding body – the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) – has a few strategic relationships with a few key companies and we are the only consumer goods company they work with.

“The EPSRC’s first ever meeting outside of London happened at the NTC.

“And there are collaboration programmes between P&G and academics at various different universities.”

Mr Bragg says Newcastle has changed massively since he first came to the region as a fresh-faced graduate.

“Everyone recognises the whole North East has totally changed in the last 25 years,” he said.

“We find no problem in finding people to come here. We recruit a lot of people from outside of the UK. Different people chose to come here.

“People recognise that the North East has a high quality of life, a good cost of living and access to the countryside.”