TR’s journey to ‘Recover, Rebuild and Resilience’

After celebrating 50 years of providing customers with engineered fastening supply chain solutions in 2023, TR Fastenings (TR) has developed a new strategic transformation plan; ‘Recover, Rebuild, Resilience’. Here we speak to Dan Jack, Chief Commercial Officer & Managing Director, UK & Ireland, about what this new strategy and growth plan means for both the business and its customers. 

Can you explain your new ‘Recover, Rebuild, Resilience’ strategy, as well as what other key developments TR has introduced over the past two years?

We recognise that our role is to help our customers remove and manage complexity in their fastener supply chain and add value to our relationship through the engineering and manufacturing talent and capabilities within the business. We are rightly proud of the high‑quality, reliable and responsive solutions that we provide our customers every day and of the knowledge and expertise we can leverage to help them succeed. Our ambition, described through our ‘Recover, Rebuild, Resilience’ journey, is to create a high‑performing TR that is a safe, inclusive and an enjoyable place to work for our employees. 

This new strategy has enabled us to bring focus to our business and recognise the things that we do really well, and at the same time have tough conversations on areas that haven't worked as we had hoped or expected. Over the years we have developed ways of doing things, acquired and built on certain expertise across global markets and it was important for us to reset with  a clear strategy, purpose and set of values for our colleagues to embrace, which are in turn understood by our customers, shareholders and our suppliers - our ‘OneTR’ culture. ‘OneTR’ develops a sense of pragmatic team spirit, understanding individual roles, objectives and focuses. ‘As a TR team member, what am I here to do? What does my purpose look like? How do I work together with my colleagues to get the best outcome?’ 
 

There have been several macro-economic and geopolitical uncertainties over the last two years. What have been the key challenges TR has faced, and continues to face, and how are you managing these as a business?

How important is sustainability for TR? What initiatives have you brought in regarding to sustainability? 

“We are committed to reducing our impact on the environment and look for innovative ways to achieve this, with an ambition of achieving a net zero business. Meeting these targets will be achieved by energy and carbon reduction within our own operations; indirect emissions from travel; and logistics and our supply chain. As part of this, we must continue to respond to requests from customers and investors on our carbon emissions, such as completing CDP (supplier and investor) and EcoVadis submissions during the 2024 financial year and will continue to do so annually.

As a recent example, TR Italy announced a significant sustainability achievement at its manufacturing facility in Umbria, Italy. Opened in 1996, the 6,110-square metre main building recently underwent an upgrade with the installation of 1,395 solar panels on its vast roof. These panels are expected to generate approximately 25-30% of the facility’s electricity, making a substantial step towards reducing its environmental impact.

Being a responsible business is critically important for TR, and we are very conscious that we both distribute and manufacture across the world. We’re always looking at how to make our factories greener, as well as our packaging, our emissions and our electricity use. This is not just a box ticking exercise, we are on a journey to a sustainable future and as a result all of our locations have targets, achievements and goals with regards to sustainability metrics. We’ve also implemented a dedicated global sustainability team – in order to provide another added service to our customers’.

As part of this commitment, it is also important that our internal culture reflects strong values that underpin our ways of working, giving due consideration to our global footprint, our local colleagues and the communities where we operate. A huge part of that is operating a safe and healthy working environment. As part of ‘Recover, Rebuild, Resilience’ we have increased the focus on protecting our team and environment, and built upon the existing platform. We are incorporating ‘OneTR’ into health and safety by providing a robust global framework that sets clear standards for all of our operations. We want to provide a safe working environment by engaging our team to help determine these standards and harness the best practice across our operations.”

As part of this new strategy what markets will TR be focusing on and why?

“As part of our strategy formation, we conducted extensive analysis on our existing and potential alternative industrial markets, looking both geographically and sector-wise at future forecast growth versus the industrial average. From a shortlist of growth sectors identified, we then evaluated customer needs, matching them against our value proposition and our current market position. Based on this approach, we identified three profitable growth sectors on which we will now focus: Automotive, smart infrastructure and medical equipment.

The automotive sector already represents our largest and most global revenue base, with TR holding strong positions with many of the world’s leading automotive Tier 1 system suppliers. Critically, we see continued growth potential, however, we recognise the need to balance growth with a more risk managed contractual relationship and be focused on technologies and systems, which will be applied to future vehicle platforms. This includes working with companies that require newer fastener technology, including all the cable management and heat management for battery systems, whether they're small batteries or part of a hybrid.

Our second largest revenue stream has been relabelled deliberately as smart infrastructure, reflecting our focus on five subsegments of growth related to smart and interconnected cities and homes such as lighting, HVAC, water, power and data, communication and connectivity. For example, in a post Covid-19 world, we are seeing bigger investments in clean air systems in public places. As a planet, we’re also seeing temperature changes, which means we’re needing to cool the air more regularly – so the demand for cleaner, cooler air is increasing.

Finally, last year, we identified a high‑growth segment of medical equipment, where TR already has captured initial business but where we feel there is significant opportunity for growth. From our customer and market insight, we believe there is a strong fit with TR’s value proposition, geographic footprint and capabilities. Recognising the longer lead time to build relationships and satisfy qualification and regulatory requirements in this sector, we expect this to be a medium to long‑term growth engine.

With our ‘OneTR’ philosophy we're taking our pockets of knowledge in certain industries, where we have an established customer base and then bringing that engineering know how to apply those same core skills into these key sectors.”

With ‘OneTR’ and the ‘Recover, Rebuild, Resilience’ strategy, where do you see these initiatives taking TR in the coming years?