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As this year’s National Apprenticeship Week gets underway today, the UK’s leading remanufacturer of engines, gearboxes and turbos for cars and vans, Ivor Searle, has launched its search for its 2024 intake of apprentices.

 Based at its factory in Soham, Cambridgeshire, where it has traded for over 75 years, Ivor Searle takes on three or four new apprentices every September, who are enrolled on the company’s engineering technician machinist Level 3 apprenticeship.
 
The successful applicants will join ten other apprentices in the company who are on their second or third year of training towards a Diploma in Advanced Manufacturing Engineering (Foundation), in association with a number of local vocational colleges. These include Cambridge Regional College, College of West Anglia and West Suffolk College. Apprentices learn the processes and engineering involved across Ivor Searle’s operation, from stripping engines and machining of components to final assembly and product development.
 
Recognising the need to recruit more young people into technical and engineering roles within the automotive sector, its investment in apprenticeships is seen as a key element in future-proofing the skills needed by the business, as David Eszenyi, Commercial Director at Ivor Searle, explains:
 
“Ivor Searle has always been an advocate of apprenticeships, which enables trainees to earn while they learn. It’s the ideal platform to develop hands-on engineering and technical skills, which our business relies upon. I started my own career as an apprentice machinist and a number of our senior staff joined Ivor Searle as apprentices. They really are the engine of our future.”
 
As a significant employer in the Cambridgeshire area, Ivor Searle participates in local recruitment fairs to advocate the benefits of apprenticeships and raise awareness of employment opportunities.
 
Funding for apprenticeships is available through the Government’s apprenticeship levy scheme, yet the latest data from the Institute of the Motor Industry’s Automotive Education Report suggests this is underutilised in the automotive sector.
 
Whilst 65% of all UK apprenticeships are supported by levy funds, the IMI reported that 52% of automotive apprenticeships received funding in 2022, which placed the motor industry in the bottom third of all sectors hiring apprentices. However, the IMI’s findings revealed an uplift in the number of enrolments year-on-year, with 43% more automotive apprenticeship starts in 2021/22 than in 2020/21.

For anyone interested in an apprenticeship with Ivor Searle please click here - https://www.ivorsearle.co.uk/About/Apprenticeships.aspx
 

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