• Employers
  • RLN NE Toolkit
  • Export Communications Review
  • Best practice
  • Case studies
  • Language Skills Data
  • Useful links
• Partners
• Education providers
• Private providers
• Individuals

Elfab

For Elfab, ten is the magic number. With the appointment of graduate Laura Williams, the company can now talk to its customers in no fewer than ten languages.

Sheffield University graduate Laura, a fluent speaker of Czech and Russian, was appointed Customer Support Representative, with specific responsibility for Central and Eastern Europe, the Russian Federation and UK North.

North Shields-based Elfab, a leading supplier of pressure-relief systems, works with some of the world's most prestigious companies including GlaxoSmithKline, Siemens, BASF and Nestlé. Central and Eastern Europe is a new market for the company following recent GOST approval, allowing it to trade in the Russian Federation.

Laura found her job after registering with BLIS jobs, a specialist website, accessed through the Regional Language Network North East's website. Her appointment followed that of Claire Lloyd who covers Spain and France, and Stefania Setzu, who focuses primarily on Elfab's Italian market.

The ten languages spoken at Elfab are French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Czech and English. The company has also translated its website into no fewer than six languages.

James Harris, Sales and Marketing Director, says: "Elfab operates in a global market, exporting over 60 per cent of production to customers outside the UK, trading in some 50 countries in 2004. While it is true that English is the international language of business, we recognise that our customers value being able to do business in their native tongue.

"We employ foreign nationals as territory sales managers in our core European markets and trade through a network of agents across the rest of the world. These field sales efforts are supported by a multi-lingual internal customer support team based here in the North East.

"The success of this formula in delivering customer satisfaction and winning profitable business has led to our most recent recruitment drive to enhance our language capability.

"We have recruited three new members to our internal team since Autumn 2004, taking the number of languages that we are fluent in to ten. This level of language skills is unusual for a North East manufacturing company and gives us a real competitive advantage in both existing and potential new geographic markets."

James Harris, Sales and Marketing Director with Stefania Setzu, Claire Lloyd and Laura Williams.

Registration with the BLIS website is free and allows recruiters to submit vacancies, or to search the database of candidates with language skills and contact suitable individuals direct by email.

Back