Since then, the 56-year-old Engineering Account Manager has become an integral part of Lawton Tubes’ base in Thrush Road, Poole, where the business manufacturers more than 6,000,000 cut lengths and 300,000 straight lengths of bespoke copper components for engineering applications – including heat exchangers, coolers and condensers, electrical connectors, and other bespoke items, as well as 100,000 coils for the automotive industry.
Caroline and the team are at the heart of Lawton Tubes’ tube production division.
Her role is wide-ranging. It includes quoting customers for potential and firm orders, negotiating contracts and call off orders, through to checking material is in stock and tooling is available.
Caroline also oversees certification of the products, mapping distribution to Lawton Tubes’ Coventry base for cleaning before re-routing to its final destination, all aspects of export packing and couriers for export orders, as well as visiting existing and potential customers.
And when it comes to knowing the right type of copper for any one job, you’d be hard pressed to find someone more knowledgeable than Caroline, who is part of a team with a combined knowledge of 200 years’ experience in tube making - a skill that she has built up over decades of working with production managers across the UK.
This knowledge stretches to other metals too, which started when she was at Smiths Metals in the 1990s supplying non-ferrous metals to various engineering and manufacturing companies, including a company that produced racing cars for the IndyCar Series in America, where she met her husband.
“A lot of responsibility rests on my shoulders because I am ultimately advising engineers on the correct type of copper that they need for their applications. If that goes wrong, then that is an expensive mistake to make,” said Caroline.
“With copper there are certain tempers required for certain applications – so for every order I check what the customer’s intentions are. For example, tube bending and flaring would require totally different tempering processes to the copper, otherwise it creates problems.
“I’ve been able to build up a lot of knowledge about copper and other metals without getting hands-on or going to university or studying – in a way I did an apprenticeship in all but name!
“That’s why I wanted to share my story, to show other people that they can forge a career by taking a chance on a trade and learning as they go.”
A career highlight for Caroline has been seeing Lawton Tubes go from strength-to-strength over the past two decades, in what is now a business with an annual turnover of £230 million, and trading in 42 countries.
She added: “When you talk to engineers a lot of them are long-serving employees because of the variety of their day-to-day roles, and while that is true for me, it’s the family ethos at Lawton Tubes that has played a major role in my longevity with the business – they care about their people and making them feel appreciated.
“A knock-on effect of that has been that I have also been able to forge some fantastic relationships with some of my customers – to the point where I am now on hugging terms with some of them!
“In terms of the quirkiest orders I have taken, we have a customer, Distorted Light, who has a patent for making War of the Worlds alien lamps, and they use some of our small diameter tube to make them – it really can be for anything that copper or copper nickel can be used in.”
And as Caroline reflects on her 25 years with Lawton Tubes – and more than 30 years in the metal engineering industry in total – she can’t help but think about what might have been if she had followed one of her other passions growing up.
“I used to be a competitive swimmer for the Poole Dolphins until I was 15, but my training got changed to 9pm on a weeknight and it was 30 miles from home, so I had no choice but to focus on my studies,” she said.
“Sometimes I wonder what might have been. Still to this day I can get into a pool and swim 20 to 30 lengths straight off, and my husband will watch in amazement.
“Both this and my HITT workouts ensure I am always raring to go in my day job which I love, and I’m looking forward to hitting even more milestones with Lawton Tubes in the future.”
