Redruth based Pall Aerospace has become the first and only employer in Cornwall to hold the Gold ‘Excellent Employer’ status for the Next Gen Makers Engineering Apprenticeships: Employer Accreditation.
Less than one point previously separated Pall Aerospace from the Gold standard at the first time of asking in 2025 and achieving Gold in 2026 reflects the ongoing commitment of the company to the continuous improvement of its’ apprenticeship scheme.
Forty years of engineering apprenticeships in Cornwall
Since taking on its first engineering apprentice in 1985, Pall Aerospace’s Redruth site, part of the Aerospace and Marine business unit within Pall Corporation, a Danaher Group company, has welcomed 102 engineering apprentices in total.
Around 20 apprentices are currently on site across four years of training, supported by a dedicated apprentice training centre.
Daniel Strong, Apprenticeship Manager at Pall Aerospace, points to the site’s own plant manager, who began his career as one of those apprentices, as proof of where the scheme can lead.
“Our current plant manager is an ex-apprentice, which is a great message for our younger apprentices coming through the business.
“We are not trying to create apprentices who will be great employees for Pall Aerospace or even Pall Redruth alone. We are trying to create apprentices who have got the skills to do the job they are trained to do in any business and apply those skills anywhere.”
It is a path that over half of the site’s current management team have followed, via Pall Aerospace or elsewhere, and approximately 40 per cent of the site’s apprentices, past and present, remain with the business today.
A rigorous, apprentice-led measure of excellence
The Engineering Apprenticeships: Employer Accreditation, backed by strategic partner and national manufacturing organisation Make UK, is validated overwhelmingly through the direct experience of current apprentices via the Apprentice Satisfaction Survey, supported by an employer benchmarking questionnaire.
Silver ‘Aspiring for Excellence’ status recognises employers making strong, active progress; Gold ‘Excellent Employer’ status is reserved for those who go further, demonstrating consistently high apprentice experience and a clear commitment to acting on what apprentices say.
Turning a near miss into a targeted improvement
When Pall Aerospace first went through the Next Gen Makers accreditation process, it achieved Silver ‘Aspiring for Excellence’ status, missing Gold by less than one point.
Rather than treat the result as a setback, the team used the benchmarking feedback to identify one specific, fixable gap: how regularly mentors and supervisors were meeting apprentices to track their learning and development.
“One of the areas we focused on was where a mentor or supervisor meets regularly with an apprentice to track their learning and development. We were not doing as well in that as we thought we should have done, and it was a great wake up call for us that we were missing an opportunity”, adds Strong.
In response, Pall Aerospace introduced monthly mentor meetings between each apprentice and their programme leader, alongside regular catchups with Strong.
Once the changes were embedded, the team requested a mid-year survey from Next Gen Makers to test whether they had made a difference.
“We were absolutely delighted to find we had achieved the gold accreditation we were striving for.
“What makes it even better is that we are the only employer in Cornwall to achieve this. We are a real trailblazer, and we are happy to share that message with any employers locally as well.
“We want to continue to build our presence here in Redruth, and we also want to share this good news story with our sister site in Portsmouth, with Cytiva, another Danaher business only a few miles from us in Newquay, and with our HR colleagues in the United States, who have asked to hear more about our approach” concludes Strong.
What this means for engineering employers
1. Treat a near miss as data, not a verdict. Pall Aerospace used its first-year Accreditation result to identify existing strengths alongside one precise gap, rather than a general sense of falling short.
2. Make mentoring measurable. Moving from informal catch-ups to scheduled monthly mentor meetings gave apprentices a consistent point of contact and gave the business clear evidence of change.
3. Test before the next annual cycle. Requesting a mid-year survey let Pall Aerospace confirm improvement rather than waiting a full year to find out whether the changes had worked.
4. Decades of experience do not mean there is nothing left to find. Forty years of running an apprenticeship scheme did not stop the accreditation process from surfacing a genuine, addressable gap.
Pall Aerospace’s move from Silver to Gold shows what a structured, apprentice-led benchmarking process can surface, even within a long-established scheme.
Employers who want the same kind of insight into their own apprenticeship experience can find out more through the Next Gen Makers Best Practice Programme.