Award success for Linde UK engineering apprentices

Jack Congram, 18, James Middleton, 26, and Callum Armour, 20, were each recognised as the best in their respective year groups and James, from Linde Creighton, was named as the overall ‘apprentice of the year.’

Held this year at Mercedes-Benz World in Weybridge, the awards celebrate and reward the talent of the employees within the Linde apprenticeship scheme.

James is the first person to have won the ‘Overall Apprentice of the Year’ award for the second time running, which he won for his academic achievements, attendance and commitment to his apprenticeship.

To reward the apprentices’ achievements, all nominated apprentices received a second-generation Amazon Fire while winners, such as James, scooped a second-generation Amazon Echo, as well as a trophy. As overall winner, James also won a trip to Paris.

The apprentices enjoyed a variety of activities at Mercedes-Benz World which included a driver experience on the original Brooklands circuits.

James said: “I’m honoured to have become the first person to win the award for overall apprentice of the year for the second year running. Even when I was working as a supervisor in my local Thorntons, I was always interested in engineering. But I needed to find a role that would support me financially, which is why the apprenticeship at Linde was such a great opportunity.

“Linde is an extremely supportive company that really helps to nurture talent and I feel like I have significantly developed during the apprenticeship programme. I’m looking forward to progressing my career at Linde and hopefully become a team leader in the future.”

Linde currently has 71 apprentices in its programme which was set up in 2011. Apprentices are sent to train at the Fork Truck Training Centre in Swindon for five weeks during their third year. The centre is the only purpose-built dedicated training centre for the forklift industry and Linde has recently supplied five trucks to the new centre for the students to use during their training.

Mark Sullivan, Aftersales Director at Linde, said: “We value all of our employees and recognising our apprentices’ is of the upmost importance to us. The awards are a great way to celebrate and recognise the hard work and dedication of our apprentices and we’d like to congratulate all of the apprentices once again.”

“Our partnership with the Fork Truck Training Centre is something we are extremely proud of as it provides significant benefit to our apprentices. It gives our students a place where they can apply the theory that they have learned in a practical setting. This experience then enables them to apply this to Linde systems and equipment.”