An Inside Look at Thornton & Ross

Web content editor Ian Bolland sits down with Roger Scarlett-Smith, executive vice president at Thornton & Ross in Huddersfield to find out how the company operates. 

By its own admission Thornton & Ross has been flying under the radar. The Huddersfield-based company was acquired by pharma company STADA and merged with Genus Pharmaceuticals in 2013.

The company is responsible for the manufacture of some household brands, with its portfolio including recognisable names such as Covonia, Eurax and Savlon.

Though it is starting to stick its head above the parapet, it is trying to maintain the feel of a family business about it, with previous owners still operating in the background and attending major events for the company, such as its launch of the Future of Health report back in November 2019.

Explaining the company’s strategy, Scarlett-Smith said: “We do think that building really strong stakeholder relationships and being more transparent about what we’re trying to achieve can help us build the business.

“We’re working quite closely with local authorities to see how we can collaborate on future investment opportunities.

“We think that we can, by reaching out to more stakeholders, we can find ways of collaborating and accelerating our growth trajectory. It’s in our business benefit to engage more openly with external stakeholders.”

Following the acquisition of five brands from GSK, the business had a strong 2018 having recorded turnover in excess of £100 million, and is expecting to report strong growth again for 2019. This has allowed them to open a new 6,500 sq. ft bottling and filling line this January which is incorporated into the company’s Huddersfield warehouse. 

Despite claiming that Thornton & Ross is a recession-proof business, Scarlett-Smith says there are various challenges for the company, primarily because of the slow growth of some of the markets it operates in.

“We’re doing well within it by finding the right kind of scenes of opportunity and acting with a bit more agility. The challenge is to be different because if you’re the same as everybody else there’s a strong price comparison and you can end up fighting a very generic battle for price. For us as a business we’re looking to add value and offer things which promise a bit more and work a bit better than the competition.

“The most recent example of that would be when we introduced a product for multiple myeloma – in our generics pharmaceutical business. It was formulated by STADA in Germany and it was a view to completely changing the market for treating multiple myeloma. It’s a ready-made injectable format whereas the standard product needs to be compounded and made up from powder.”

Despite having a global business with expertise to tap in like STADA, Scarlett-Smith was keen to emphasise the local element is still a big part of the company’s strategy. Its support for local sport even includes once being the sponsors of Huddersfield Town Football Club’s away kit in 2009/10.

“Most of the effort and staff goes into the local affiliates and that’s still very much our strategy. There are certain things that are worth doing – like managing HR resources across the world. Systems manufacturing, in many cases, is nowadays a global decision.

“From our point of view, based in Huddersfield, we are keen to demonstrate we can be investable as a business within that context. Growing our business, driving efficiency, creating the skills locally is very important so that in the future STADA will continue to see this site as investable and continue to support our growth – which they’re doing at the moment, I’ve no complaints.”