Our Execution Priorities
Our strategy builds on our strengths and focuses on the development of our three core capabilities in customer focus, application engineering and materials science. To continue the development of our core capabilities we have three execution priorities:
We are creating a ‘big positive difference’, making sure we govern our business the right way, look after the environment, look after our people and operate to high ethical standards. This priority supports our focus on living and breathing our commitments on inclusion, treating people fairly, reducing waste, managing our water consumption, and reducing emissions.
In 2022, we have made a big positive difference by serving our communities, and by driving inclusion and diversity. Our goal is to have a positive impact on the communities we serve, from supporting job creation and skills advancement to reducing energy and water consumption at our plants.
We have:
- Championed involvement at a local level, looking to understand each community’s priorities and concerns. Our people made a big positive difference. For example, our Stourport, UK, team supported a local primary school with the design and build of a unique eco-friendly learning windmill, in collaboration with pupils from the school.
- Committed time to sustainability activities. For example, our Singapore team carried out a park clean up in their local area, demonstrating their support for creating a cleaner and improved environment for everyone in the local community.
- Supported the next generation and STEM activities. For example, our Saint Marcellin, France, plant welcomed students from the Lyon CESI engineers school, to complete internal audits on site. Students had the opportunity to apply their audit knowledge to real life situations, with the support of our local team.
- Undertaken a number of water conservation projects to reduce water usage, especially in high water stress areas. Our Gujarat, India, team commissioned a new on-site waste water treatment plant following a water audit to identify opportunities to reduce, reuse and recycle water at the site. The treatment plant has led to an impressive 15 kl/day of water recycling capacity
We want our leadership teams to be more representative of the communities that we serve. In 2022, we:
- Launched our new licence to recruit programme, supporting our hiring managers through diversity training. We implemented more diverse hiring panels and created more inclusive language for our job adverts to have a broader appeal to diverse candidates.
- Developed a new DE&I framework which helped us launch three new employee resource groups (ERGs) supporting women, veterans and our LGBTQ+ colleagues. These ERGs in turn held virtual and in-person events marking important dates on the diversity and inclusion calendar and opening direct lines of communication to leaders on key topics.
- Started to develop a modern and appealing inclusive employer brand, with a reward and benefits programme to attract and retain talented global leaders.
To ‘delight the customer’ we are following on from our foundational work on sales effectiveness, working to shape our product and service offerings further based on customer needs, with the overall objective of making our business more customer-centric.
We seek to build trusted partnerships with our customers, as they have come to expect that Morgan can help solve their problems and grow their businesses. The more we understand about their business, their market and their technical challenges, the more effective we can be at providing them with a solution. This means we collaborate closely at the technical level to ensure that our products pass any customer’s stringent and extensive performance tests. It also means we are often specified as the supplier for spare parts and maintenance during the lifespan of products.
During 2022, we have made great progress in supporting our customers in utilising silicon carbide in power electronics. One of our customers in the silicon carbide space recently turned to us for help. Given the sharp growth of the industry, not all their suppliers were ready to grow with them and our customer faced the potential of a major supply shortage. Our dedicated team was quick to establish a new product and service offering, and within three months started to supply that new product to our customer. We worked hand in hand with the customer to clearly understand their product requirements and rapidly prototype the product through design testing cycles, and we delivered a precision manufactured product to meet the immediate need. We are now scaling the production platform to grow with our customer.
Long-time and newer customers appreciate how Morgan delivers great materials science, problem-solving and operational capabilities to support their business.
Many of our customers have an increasing need to reduce their energy consumption and CO2e emissions; these customers need our help. Our ‘innovate to grow’ priority supports our focus on working with the customer to innovate in traditional heavy industries whilst also contributing to greener technologies for the future.
With more than 400 scientists and engineers across the Group, our people are busy developing new materials and applications. Our deep expertise in carbon and ceramics is maintained and strengthened through our ongoing process of research and development, an area that we invest approximately £30 million in each year. Each business unit has a clear strategy and a technology roadmap that supports our customers and fulfils our purpose to make the world more sustainable.
Today, our innovative products and solutions are helping customers to reduce their carbon emissions. We manufacture precision ceramic cores that are used to cast turbine blades for aero engines and industrial gas turbines. Our customers come to us for their most demanding applications, for example when they need to hold very fine features on small components. And these demanding applications arise as the latest generation of engines need to run hotter to be more efficient. Our cores enable these new engine technologies.
We produce some of the leading brush grades for wind turbines, offering longer lifetimes than our competitors. In addition to enabling wind technology, we also drive lower maintenance activity, and costs, for wind farm operators, further reducing the CO2 footprint.
In the electrified rail market, we produce a range of collector strips and carbon shoes to connect the train to the power cable or rail. In the metro market in China, we have developed a wide range of high-performance material grades to perform in the varied climatic conditions across China. Our products directly enable electrified rail, and offer superior lifetimes.
Our products are widely used in the semiconductor manufacturing process. We are seeing rapid growth in power electronics applications for electric vehicles and grid power conditioning, and we are directly enabling clean transportation and the renewable grid. Through their life, our products typically save 10s or 100s of times the CO2 emitted in manufacture.