A Week In The Life Of A Whitham Mills Apprentice

Investing in the future and promoting personal development within the workplace is key to Whitham Mills’ success. Whitham Mills takes on new apprentices annually and emphasises the key to growing engineering talent in house.

Currently, Whitham Mills has two employed apprentices one specialising in Fitting and Machining and the other in Mechanical and Electrical engineering both on a 4-year course.

Heading up the Whitham Mills Service and Maintenance Department is our Service Director and Service Manager, who both started out as Whitham Mills Apprentices and has worked their way up. The Whitham Mills Apprentice Scheme is second to none providing one-to-one support for our junior engineers. With a combination of college and on the job learning a Whitham Mills Apprentice is equipped with the best knowledge to graduate their courses and become a full-time engineer at our factory or on the road working for Whitham Mills and eventually passing on their knowledge to a new batch of apprentices.

A week in the life of a Whitham Mills apprentice consists of 30hrs on the job training and 1 day in college working towards their BTEC qualifications. Working in a fully equipped factory, the apprentices will assist our senior engineers in building new equipment as well as refurbishing old equipment from start to finish.

Ben Smart, Whitham Mills MD, encourages taking on new apprentices as often as possible stating that “the WME engineering apprentice course is unparalleled and allows our apprentices to work daily alongside the experienced and senior engineers handing down the specialist knowledge that makes our engineers the best in the business. Once more our apprentices are given a guarantee of a job after they complete their course providing them with the job security.”

“Due to the breadth of services offered at WME the apprentice learn about each and every component on our equipment by getting hands-on experience with not only our brand new balers but also our in house refurbished equipment by stripping it down and then building them back up with new components.”