For several years Actikem has been giving students from schools in the local community an opportunity to gain work experience in the chemical manufacturing industry. Positions have been offered to local students in their laboratories and offices to help students gain an understanding of what jobs and skills are available in the speciality or industrial chemicals sector.
This year we welcomed Lottie Marston from Loreto Grammer School in Altrincham and Boris Chu from Broadoak School in Partington for 1 week in July.
Lottie, who wants to be a chemical engineer spent her time in our laboratories helping our technicians and chemists prepare for the quality control testing of our products and setting up experiments for new product development. Lottie was able to experience the use of several analytical techniques using a range of laboratory equipment, for example Karl Fisher titrations for water content, refractive index, density and the viscosity measurement of liquids.
Boris aspires to be a business manager so spent his time in our sales and supply chain offices getting familiar with Actikem’s business processes, IT systems and accounting systems.
Both students were especially impressed with the commitment Actikem had made to support STEM learning in the community and our work with other education establishments.
Trevor Gleave, the Company’s Operations Director said, “we recognise that business have a duty to cultivate the next generation of engineers, chemists and business leaders and we hope that through this work experience, Actikem support schools in developing the skills for future generation of workers in our industry”.
In a thank you card Lottie wrote “Thank you so much for the opportunity and enabling me to explore my interest in chemistry. Everyone has been so helpful and I have definitely learnt a lot! It has been a very interesting few days and has definitely helped me think more about my future”
Actikem’s purpose is to enhance lives through chemistry. We believe our student work experience program supports local schools and students relate better to the chemical industry and potentially help recruit employees of the future.
Actikem are a contract chemical manufacturing, formulation and repackaging company that service the UK and European chemical supply chain from its site in Warrington, UK.