Feng Shui: the energy behind global moves at Clyde Blowers; Chi

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Apr 11, 2004 | by Valerie Darroch

IN the sedate, wood-panelled boardroom of Clyde Blowers's headquarters in East Kilbride, a solitary blue chair stands out around a polished table with neatly arranged rows of brown chairs. The blue one belongs to Jim McColl, chairman and chief executive of the company, who embraces the principles of Feng Shui.

The colour of his chair was chosen on advice from a Feng Shui specialist who played a major part in kitting out the headquarters from the placing of the furniture down to choosing colours from which McColl can draw strength for the daily task of leading a portfolio of businesses with 1000 staff and operations in more than 30 countries.

"We Feng Shui'd the whole office. My colours from which I draw strength are blue and black," McColl says.

To some the notion of having a Feng Shui consultant might sound indulgent or eccentric but McColl, a Carmunnock-born multi- millionaire who left school at 16, is a hard-headed businessman who has become one of Scotland's wealthiest men through a blend of hard work and calculated risk-taking.

Feng Shui (which means wind and water) originated some 4000 years ago in China when palaces were designed to blend with earth energies known as chi. For centuries Feng Shui devotees have sought to harness positive energies to bring harmony, health, wealth and wisdom, partly through the strategic placing of objects in the home and office. McColl's love of Feng Shui gives a glimpse of the more contemplative side of his nature which keeps him focused on growing Clyde Blowers years after he could have retired to his luxury pad in Monaco.

McColl possesses a considerable life force of his own, as his leadership has transformed Clyde Blowers from a stock market laggard with a market value of just (pounds) 10 million some five years ago to a privately-owned business which he estimates is now worth (pounds) 500m.

His links with China have deepened in the eight years since he first established a base there. From a small start working with the coal-fired power industry, China is poised to become the biggest single revenue-earner for the group as it moves into sectors such as steel-making, the cement and minerals industries and non-ferrous metals.

Since McColl led the (pounds) 24.5m deal to take Clyde Blowers private in 1999, he has completed two more significant deals. In 2001 he part-sold the core power-related activities under the name Clyde Bergemann in a (pounds) 75m deal backed by his own investment vehicle Redwood Capital and US private equity partners Saw Mill Capital and in 2002 he sold CleanCut Technologies, an offshore waste-disposal specialist to M-I-Swaco for (pounds) 250m.

Now he is grooming other parts of the group for high growth in global markets and says one in particular, inBulk Technologies, could be a bigger success than CleanCut.

Pointing to a hexagonal diagram which illustrates the shape of Clyde Blowers in future, it is clear that McColl's ambition is undimmed. The main section of the group remains part-owned Clyde Bergemann, the power-related activities. The other businesses are CleanCut (no longer owned by the group but it retains a mutually beneficial relationship with the new owner); Clyde Materials Handling, which has expertise in handling bulk materials; inBulk Technologies which is pioneering new ways of transporting bulk materials, such as cement and chemicals; and Redwood Capital, the private equity firm headed by McColl.

"The Clyde Blowers model is a portfolio of companies with centrally managed services and our strategy is to have four to five parts growing at one time," McColl says. He plans to add two more ventures and is prepared to pay (pounds) 100m per deal. "Money is not the constraint, it's opportunity," he says.

A team of R&D experts in Doncaster is working on technical solutions for a range of industries and sometimes the answers they come up with spawn a new spinout, such as CleanCut which started as a request from Shell to come up with an environmentally friendly way of dealing with offshore waste.

"We're problem-solvers. The first reaction from our R&D people is always that it can't be done. We say - "Ah, but if it could how would you do it," McColl says.

The patented technology they developed under the CleanCut brand became so critical to the industry that McColl was pressed into a sale long before he planned, fetching a handsome price as a result.

He believes inBulk Technologies has the potential to be the 'must- have' solution for the global cement industry and possibly other industries too, such as bulk chemicals if trials with Exxon between Southampton and continental Europe prove successful.

In simple terms, the inBulk team have designed a container which allows cement and other bulk materials to be transported efficiently by road or rail with minimal waste and pollution. The containers are being trialled in the UK by cement giant Rugby, which wanted a new method of transporting cement for the construction of Terminal Five at Heathrow airport, and now Mexican firm Cemex is considering using it to transport cement to rebuild the World Trade Centre.