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Following the acquisition of CEL International by WSP Group, we are very pleased to announce that Nigel Barnes has joined CEL International as Operations Director with primary responsibility for the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, industrial and chemical project activities.

Nigel is a very senior figure in the pharmaceutical industry as he was previously Vice-President of Engineering at GlaxoSmithKline.

As indicated by WSP Group’s acquisition of CEL, the Group is ambitious to consolidate its position as a leading player in the process industries, particularly in the pharmaceutical sector. In addition, WSP fully supports CEL’s strategy of continued year-on-year growth. Such growth requires the strengthening of CEL’s executive management team and Nigel will add extra quality and management expertise to facilitate this.

With the WSP Group’s worldwide presence and premier brand together with CEL’s established expertise in these industries, Nigel will now look to ensuring its services are best in the industry and will also support the company’s planned international growth.

Nigel commented: “I am really excited about joining the CEL team to help strengthen the process capability within WSP Group. From the perspective of the pharmaceutical clients I know that there is a real opportunity for CEL to develop a service which consistently exceeds the client expectations. I look forward to playing a role in ensuring CEL achieves this.”

Ed Wilson, Chief Executive of CEL, in welcoming Nigel’s appointment said: “CEL continues to consolidate its ambition to be the premier service provider to the process industries. With Nigel joining us we can now offer our customers a greater understanding of their needs as well as an enhanced capability to deliver it.”

After a highly successful period of growth and development the shareholders of CEL International have agreed to sell the shareholding of the company to WSP Group.

WSP is one of the world’s fastest-growing design, engineering and management consultancies. Specialising in property, transport and environmental projects approximately two thirds of their work is in the private sector and the balance in the public sector. For further information visit their website: www.wspgroup.com.

Notable activities of WSP are that they are structural engineers for three of the new towers at Ground Zero, New York and were engineers for the new GSK corporate headquarters at Brentford.

They have a worldwide presence and are in the top 250 listed companies on the London stock exchange. Their reputation is second to none and as such they will provide CEL with significant new opportunities. We have no doubt that WSP will add to CEL’s reputation for excellence with an international brand and presence.

CEL’s position within the Group will be unique, in offering a process engineering capability, and this will be recognised with the continuation of CEL as an autonomous entity.

Every effort will be made to maximise synergies within the wider group and this will allow for growth potential to match the ambitions of both parties. This ensures the continued requirement for all CEL’s current staff and significant opportunities for future development of every individual.

All the current management of CEL are being retained in the business.

Our customers will remain the essential focus of CEL. It is not envisaged that there will be any disruption to our activities or changes to our delivery or management of our processes. We fully expect to retain the personal approach to customer liaison whilst offering the support of a significant business that fully understands the challenges of running an engineering organisation.

The management team will make itself available to answer any questions: please feel free to contact them.

We very much look forward to supporting our staff so as to serve our customers and work with the supply chain as successfully as we have in the past.

This is an opportunity to strive for even greater levels of service and to offer fulfilling roles for our entire team with supportive new colleagues within a highly complementary culture.

CEL International has been awarded the top award in the Coventry Telegraph Business Awards 2007.

We were named Business of the Year at the ceremony held on 5 July at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry. The awards have been run for 14 years by the local newspaper in association with the Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce.

We were one of 24 companies recognised at the awards, which were attended by business leaders from all over Coventry and Warwickshire.

Following the recent acquisition by CEL International of its Irish partner IPDC Ltd (Integrated Process Design Consultants), a Process Engineering Group has been established. The group will serve the Irish market based from the Cork office.

CEL International is a process-led project management consultancy firm, headquartered in the UK, with over 40 years of experience delivering projects to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, food and chemical industries.

The new group will led by Frank Riedewald, who joined CEL in November 2006. Frank is an accomplished process design engineer with over 15 years’ experience, particularly in the bulk and secondary pharmaceutical areas. He also has extensive experience of the fine chemical and chemicals industries. Frank is chairman of the ASME Bio-processing European Sub-committee on Design for Sterility and Cleanability and has published numerous papers and spoken at conferences on these topics.

Frank, who has a Masters Degree in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University of Berlin, has specific experience in secondary aseptic processes, containment, technology transfer and environmental engineering. He has worked with a number of clients in Ireland to include Abbott, Alza Corporation, Bristol Myers-Squibb, Merck and Warner-Lambert (now Pfizer).

The recruitment of Frank to lead the Process Engineering Group at CEL International is a key step in improving the service offering, particularly to the pharmaceutical industry, in Ireland.

We’d like to thank you all for your support and help in 2006, which has been another successful year for CEL. As one would expect, the year has not been without its challenges and highlights.

The key challenge for our industry has been the availability of skilled staff during a prolonged period of high demand in the UK and overseas. On occasion this has presented issues for us, but CEL’s strength has been seen to be its commitment and ability to respond and continue to deliver to our valued customers.

Turning to highlights: we have consolidated our regional strategy by moving both our Northwest office to Runcorn and our Scottish office to new premises in Glasgow. Both moves have been necessary to deal with growing repeat and new business demands. We have also taken on additional space and staff at our Coventry Headquarters to continue to effectively deliver larger projects in the pharmaceutical and biotech, food, consumer, chemical and environmental sectors.

We’re pleased also to reflect on a year that has allowed us to consolidate our position in Ireland through our acquisition of Cork-based Engineering Consultancy IPDC, and our expansion of our Chinese business through the establishment of a locally incorporated company and a doubling in the number of staff.

All of the above is only possible because of the ongoing support of customers, colleagues and members of the supply chain, and we’d like to thank you all again for the opportunities to continue to deliver “Best Value Service Through an Integrated Team”.

Returning to the challenge of effective resourcing, we have recognised that this is a key industry challenge and have responded by taking the difficult decision to decline over £100M of new work, enabling us to continue to service our existing clients to the very best of our ability. This reflects our view that our long-term relationships and effective service delivery are more important to us than short-term workload revenues.

Our core business is, and will remain, the delivery of high quality, flexible project services across the process and related industries. You will continue to see an increasing ability to support your projects locally from our regional offices. We have a strong consultancy offering and can support you with these activities, ranging from master planning new sites, via specialist engineering and process modelling through to land remediation and decommissioning.

Our recently updated strategic intent sets some of the above into context.

Thank you again for your support through 2006, and we look forward to working with you through 2007 and beyond.

Ed Wilson, Chief Executive Officer
Gareth Davies, Managing Director

On behalf of the CEL Management Team

CEL International is pleased to announce the further expansion of its Irish operation through the acquisition of its Irish partner IPDC Ltd (Integrated Process Design Consultants).

CEL International is a process-led project management consultancy firm, headquartered in the UK, with over 40 years of experience delivering projects to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, food and chemical industries.

CEL International currently employs in excess of 380 specialist personnel. This includes the Cork-based Irish operation which has a current staff of 30 professionals and is anticipated to grow to a workforce of 60 as it expands its current market position.

As part of the development plans the Cork Office has established a Process Engineering Group led by Frank Riedewald. Frank is an accomplished process design engineer with over 15 years’ experience, particularly in the bulk and secondary pharmaceutical industries.

Kieran Goode, Managing Director of the Ireland operation, comments: “The continuing growth within the Irish pharmaceutical, food and chemical sectors, fuelled by the biotech sector, lends itself to a continuing need for the supply of cost-effective project management services. CEL International, with its excellent worldwide reputation for project delivery, is now well positioned to support this with its Cork-based office.”