Powder Plant & Compounding Supervisor Craig Shields reaches his 9th year with Bond It this month. Ever visible in his bright orange safety top, he’ll proudly tell you that he gets the job done and looks after his lads: both of those are equally important to him and that results in him being one of the most respected guys on the shop floor. It’s not an easy juggling act to be in authority and yet remain popular with the staff but he seems to have pulled it off.
Hailing from Southowram, he’s a keen gardener - well he was until the kids (he has 3) wrecked his flowers and he turned to growing herbs instead. In doing that he’s harking back to a previous career when he was a chef in Ireland: good experience, he says, for organising a team and keeping focussed on the job. When he’s not protecting his herbs from his kids you might find him at Brookfoot Lake in Brighouse where he’s a member of the Brighouse Angling Association: an ex-chef who fishes and grows herbs … we all need to get round Craig’s house at dinnertime!
He’s a big Beatles fan and, unusually, doesn’t mind which period of the Beatles you’re talking about – he likes it all from Please Please Me right through to The Long and Winding Road. Speaking of long, winding roads: he’s a Leeds United fan too and has been for most of his life with one short period when he supported someone else, and here’s where you get the measure of the man. After supporting Leeds like his Dad for years he found out that a friend of his was being bullied for being an Everton supporter. Craig wasn’t having that, so he switched to Everton for a couple of years to give his friend some support in the playground.
As for the future: “I’m a Bond It man” says Craig, “I want to see myself eventually as the supervisor of the whole of the shop floor”. But he doesn’t want to do it from an office or a computer, “No mate, I’m hands on, I’ve always been hands on and that’s what works for me”. It works for us too, thanks Craig your motivation, enthusiasm and results are very much appreciated by the Company.