Darwen’s WEC Group celebrates 20th anniversary of WEC Engineering Academy

WEC Group is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the WEC Engineering Academy, marking two decades of investment in apprenticeships, local skills and the future of UK manufacturing.

Launched in 2006, the Academy was created after WEC recognised that a shortage of skilled welders, fabricators and engineers was limiting the company’s ability to grow. Rather than accept the skills gap as a barrier, WEC made the decision to train its own workforce from the ground up.

Twenty years on, that decision has had a lasting impact. WEC has now trained more than 430 apprentices since opening their in-house Academy, including 200 apprentices in the last five years alone. Apprenticeships have become central to WEC’s growth strategy, helping the business expand from 136 staff to over 1,150 employees while building a strong pipeline of skilled engineers for the future.

Steve Hartley, Managing Director of WEC Group, said: “When we launched the Academy in 2006, it was because we could see that the industry needed a different approach to skills. We were struggling to find enough skilled people, so we decided to invest in young people, train them properly and give them a real career. Twenty years later, the Academy has become one of the best decisions we have ever made as a business. It has helped WEC grow, but more importantly it has changed lives and created opportunities for hundreds of people.”

The Academy has grown from its original base in Lancashire into a national model for employer-led engineering training. A second training school opened at WEC Group’s Rotherham site in 2016 (MTL Advanced), while the company continued investing through the Covid lockdowns period with the build of a new state-of-the-art training facility in Blackburn to allow them to double their annual intake of apprentices. In 2025, the apprenticeship scheme was also replicated at WEC’s Coventry site (HTA Group), extending training opportunities across the Group’s UK manufacturing footprint.

The programme combines practical workshop training, classroom learning, mentoring and real manufacturing experience, giving apprentices the technical ability, confidence and work ethic needed to succeed in industry. Apprentices now train across various key areas including welding, fabrication, machining, technical engineering, IT, marketing and business administration.

Kris Mercer, Academy Manager and CSWIP Master Welding Instructor at WEC Group, said: “The most rewarding part of the Academy is seeing apprentices arrive with potential and leave as confident, skilled tradespeople. Many of them come to us straight from school, and over the years we watch them develop not only their technical ability, but their confidence, discipline and pride in their work. The Academy has produced supervisors, managers and highly skilled engineers who are now helping train the next generation.”

The Academy’s quality has been externally recognised through WEC Group’s recent Ofsted monitoring visit, where all areas were graded as making “Significant Progress”. Ofsted praised the Academy’s ambitious curriculum, high-quality training delivered by experienced instructors, strong safeguarding culture and support for apprentices with additional learning needs.

The impact of the Academy extends beyond WEC. By creating skilled jobs, retaining local talent and strengthening the engineering labour market, the programme has supported the local economy and helped reinforce the region’s manufacturing sector. WEC Group also works closely with schools, colleges and careers events to promote engineering as an ambitious and rewarding career path.

Apprentices have also contributed to community projects, including anti-knife-crime work for Lancashire Police, installations for Rotherham Hospice and bespoke engineering projects that showcase the positive impact of manufacturing skills beyond the factory floor.

Steve Hartley added: “Manufacturing has a huge future in the UK, but only if companies are prepared to invest in people. The WEC Engineering Academy proves what can be achieved when industry takes responsibility for developing skills. Our aim now is to keep building on that legacy and continue developing the next generation of world-class engineers.”