FANUC UK welcomes apprentices to its Coventry facility

Working closely with, the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), FANUC has recently welcomed two of MTC’s ‘gold standard’ apprentices, Oscar Pickerill, 20, and Ben Farmer, 17.

Both students believe that their respective schools needed to promote apprenticeships more, rather than focusing on ‘traditional’ higher education routes, such as university.

Farmer said: “I needed something that I was passionate about. After successful work experience placements at Jaguar Land Rover and a civil engineering company, I knew I was interested a career in manufacturing.”

Pickerill explained: “The class learning environment wasn’t for me and I knew I didn’t want to go to university, but the advice my school provided pointed in the direction of the government’s apprenticeship website, rather than focusing on companies and industries that we actually wanted to work in.”

They are now working with FANUC as part of its extensive two-year apprenticeship programme after a successful work placement.

The pair also believe the benefit of studying while being paid a wage is a draw for many apprentices and it is these rewards, alongside the rising costs of attending university, that apprenticeships should be increasingly considered as a viable option for students their age.

Based in Coventry, the MTC offers a range of apprenticeship programmes in advanced engineering and the company also works with manufacturers to offer the opportunity to use their Apprenticeship Levy to fund engineering apprentices who will gain training experience in product design and development.

In 2018, the MTC announced that it would aim to recruit 96 apprentices in September with plans to triple that number by 2020, with its Managing Director Tom Bouchier a former apprentice himself, they are embedded into FANUC’s culture.