18 entrepreneurs Jan Ward – a woman of mettle


Don’t tell Jan Ward it cannot be done – because she will tell you the barriers are in your head. Ward is very keen to attract more people into engineering and promote exporting – and she’s certainly in the right place to do it. Ward founded Corrotherm in 1992 and started supplying high-grade metals to the oil gas and desalination markets. Since then, the company has gone from strength to strength, expanding significantly and building up a strong global presence and blue-chip customer base. In 2009, she was named the UK’s most inspirational female entrepreneur, winning the coveted NatWest Everywoman Award which champions female entrepreneurs. A keen international traveller, Ward has used her experience to build overseas markets and develop long-term customer relationships, especially in the Middle East. Highly passionate about manufacturing industry, Ward is a non- executive director at Hampshire Chamber of Commerce


The second youngest of six, Jan Ward left school at 15 without the 12 O-levels she was on course to pass – because she was pregnant.


It was not the easiest start in


life, both personal nor working, and she admits she had no idea what she wanted to do, or what she could do. She married the father of her baby boy, but after moving out of her family home and getting a flat, realised marriage at such a young age was not what she wanted. She had a thorough education behind her though. Being musical and passing her 11-plus got her into the then Woolston Comprehensive in Southampton, a school which had only just changed from a grammar school to a comprehensive. That solid grounding and wandering around the Vosper Thorneycroft yard at Woolston in dresses, where her father worked as a boilermaker, fired Jan’s ambition. Ward’s son is 40 and she has grandchildren in France, but with her husband Jon you will find her enjoying wide-ranging activities – walking, cycling, sailing, her garden in the New Forest and, until six years ago, she had a motorcycle and would like another one.


most, although I liked the commercial side too. Seeing steel being made hooked me, utterly. That was it – engineering.


And from there, what were your next steps?


Where did your career start? I had no qualifications and needed a job.


was lucky with childcare because I come from a very large family who helped, so I began working with a programme called On the Move, teaching adults to read.


It


seemed incomprehensible to me that adults did not have this skill and I love books.


I


read a lot of proper books, old hardbacks. You won’t find me with a Kindle. I had a shop job and worked for Readers Digest, but spent nearly all I earned on books.


I


separated from my husband and had an opportunity to undertake the Institute of Export course, Foundation and Part One, which led to a trainee job with Tubesales (now TW Metals) at 19. I stayed there for eight years and found that it was the engineering side that interested me the


www.businessmag.co.uk I


By the late 1980s, I had a MEng qualification and had built the export department at Aalco, but I was not allowed to go on trade missions. When a Kuwaiti delegation came over to sort out a highly complex order, I was not asked to attend the meeting, initially, yet I had put the order together. I was brought in to resolve issues. I have never had a problem dealing with Middle Eastern colleagues, because they view European women in business differently to their own. I went back to Tubesales because they asked me to; when I left export sales fell. By the late 1980s I had worked my way up from sales supervisor to export director. I moved to start the Middle East office for Phillip Cornes, and having started three export business for other companies I thought ’I will start my own’.


Tell us about the company


Corrotherm (which is an amalgamation of corrosion and thermal) was formed 22 years ago. Most people were surprised I had not done it earlier. I sold a car, obtained huge credits from industry friends – including £80,000 from Martin Devaney at Thyssen for my first order – wrote a


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – SOLENT & SOUTH CENTRAL – SEPTEMBER 2014


business plan, got a £20,000 overdraft and began working in my front room with no salary for six months.


What’s the most important thing you’ve learned in business?


I remarried by the time I started Corrotherm, which meant we had a


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