Derbyshire science company marks more than a century of long service awards at first ceremony since Covid

Science company Lubrizol, which employs more than 350 people at its UK headquarters based at Hazelwood near Belper, held an awards ceremony honouring four people for giving 30 years of service, along with another four who have notched up a quarter of a century. There were also awards for 20, 15 and five years of working for the company.

The longest serving employee recognised by Lubrizol – which has branches all over the UK – had completed 35 years of service up at its Blackley site in Manchester.

One long-standing staff member based in Hazelwood was Dave Spivey, who has been at Lubrizol for 30 years. His current job as technology manager involves looking how to de-carbonise the motor industry.

Dave, 57, graduated in chemistry from Bristol University in 1987, and joined Lubrizol aged 27.He said: “It feels like yesterday that I joined, to be honest! Although when I look back, one can see how much the world has moved on. I’ve still got a copy of a company magazine from back in 1992 that has an article in it entitled “Electronic Mail Made Easier.” It’s remarkable to think emails, which we now take for granted, were in their infancy just 30 years ago.

“It has been a succession of jobs that I have done at Lubrizol. Being a smaller company than many of our customers, you tend to know people across the company, which is nice.”

Early on in his career at Lubrizol Dave spent time at one of its overseas branches in Stockholm, travelling all over Scandinavia, before moving back to Derbyshire in 2000.

As one of Lubrizol’s longest standing employees, Dave has got involved with many of the company’s fundraising initiatives, the most recent of which has seen it raise more than £28,000 for mental health charity Mind. The money was raised through employees being sponsored to clock up a whopping 8,542 miles by walking, swimming, running, cycling, rowing and even playing golf, with the original aim of completing the distance between the UK and Japan – 5,882 miles – where the Olympic Games were hosted in 2021.

Lubrizol had announced its support for Mind in early 2020, and Covid lockdowns meant employees had to come up with some inventive ways of completing the miles with many planned team activities prevented from taking place.

Dave said: “Mental health is a really important issue. I think there’s so much opportunity lost through poor mental health. The work that Mind does is incredibly important. I wanted to contribute to that so took on 1,000 miles of rowing during 2021.” He completed the challenge by clocking up 10,000 metres a day over a period of several months. In the past he’s taken on the notoriously tough Yorkshire Three Peaks, to raise money for Motor Neurone Disease.

Dave said he has thoroughly enjoyed his time at Lubrizol and paid tribute to the resilience of younger members of staff who had joined during Covid.

He said: “It’s a gorgeous site to be on at Hazelwood. You’re out in this lovely countryside. My attitude is if it wasn’t right here, I wouldn’t have stayed. It’s been good to come back after the pandemic too, particularly now, appreciating how much I had missed getting together. As somebody who’s been here a long time, I feel it’s very important to be on site more. The pandemic came when I had been in Lubrizol for 28 years. There were people who had barely started. I don’t know how they coped with it. I have so much respect for young people who had got to cope with the social isolation at a time in life when it matters most. I take my hat off to them.”

At the awards ceremony, 11 members of Hazelwood-based staff marked 20 years of working for Lubrizol, while 17 received 15 years’ service awards.

Mike Harding, global creative director at Lubrizol, said: “It was great to hold our long service awards again, for the first time since before the pandemic. At Lubrizol we do see many of our colleagues notch up some impressive records working for us. Especially in today’s fast-paced world, we pride ourselves in the fact that people want to stay and work here for many years. For any employee to work in one place for 20 years or more is a considerable achievement, so we congratulate all those who have committed a large proportion of their working lives to us.”