Manufacturing Leaders

Manufacturing T-REX Leather

• Mark Bracknall • Season 12 • Episode 2

Share episode

Send us a text

Dinosaur leather. Lab-grown meat. Replacement corneas.
It might sound like science fiction, but it’s happening right now in Newcastle at 3D BioTissues.

Adam Crosby, Director of Operations, reveals how this spin-out from Newcastle University (founded in 2019) is developing groundbreaking biological materials: from luxury leathers genetically verified as dinosaur skin to medical treatments that could change lives.

🔬 How it works:

 Cells are cultivated using nutrients like glucose and growth factors, multiplying naturally to form tissues. Unlike traditional methods, 3D BioTissues produce pure biological materials without scaffolding—a world-first approach.

✨ Key innovations:

  • 🦖 Dinosaur leather already drawing attention from luxury fashion houses
  • 🍖 Pure lab-grown meat created without scaffolding
  • 👁️ Lab-grown corneas with the potential to transform eye treatments for both animals and humans

👤 Leadership & culture:
Adam champions a servant leadership style—empowering people to succeed whether he’s in the office or not. The team uses suggestion systems and innovation forms to encourage fresh ideas at every level.

⚠️ Challenges for the region:
Despite world-class universities, many Northeast graduates move south to the Oxford–Cambridge–London “Golden Triangle” where funding is richer. Local combined authorities are now working together to support the science industry with better funding and specialist lab space.

🚀 The future:
From dinosaur watch straps to vision-saving medical breakthroughs, 3D BioTissues is proof that the Northeast is shaping the future of science and manufacturing.

👉 Listen to the full conversation now, and don’t forget to like and subscribe to help share these innovations.

Please subscribe to the channel for more content! Theo James are a Manufacturing & Engineering Recruiter based in the North East, helping Manufacturing and Engineering firms grow across the UK. Please call us on 0191 5111 298

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the episode of the Manufacturing News Podcast with me, mark Bracknell Myles' Director of Theo James Recruitment. Today we welcome Adam Crosby, the Director of Operations at 3D BioTissues in Newcastle. If you are fascinated by dinosaurs, if you're a fan of Jurassic Park, this is the episode to you. What an unbelievably fascinating business.

Speaker 1:

3d BioTissues, based in Newcastlele set up an issue via Newcastle University, manufacture via lab or create via lab a variety of things, including leather made from dinosaurs. Let me explain or let Adam explain during the episode so we talked about this in detail what the business does, how the business was set up, how actually, the world of science within the Northeast is actually a lot, lot bigger than people realize but needs help to try and keep it progressing. We talk about leadership, we talk about building businesses and everything in between. It's definitely an episode you can learn quite a lot about. So thank you, adam, for making me aware of this tremendous business and exactly what you do and exactly what goes on inside that lab. So please, please, please, click that like and subscribe and help me share the channel and the show. Much appreciated, hope you enjoy the episode. Excellent, a massive warm welcome today to Adam Crosby, the Director of Operations at 3D Biotissues in Newcastle. How are you, adam?

Speaker 2:

You all right. Yeah, thanks for having me, Mark.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you very much for coming on. I can't wait for this episode because we're going to learn a lot about this particular subject and some really exciting, interesting things. Before we delve into that first question, the same question I ask everyone that comes on what does it mean to you to be a leader?

Speaker 2:

Oh my goodness. I think it depends on the people involved, but I think there's different kinds of leadership styles. I always like to look at the sort of servant leadership style where I'm working for everyone else on my team and I want to bring out the best in my team because the better they perform, the less I have to do really. So it's trying to make a situation where it doesn't matter if I'm in the office or not. The whole team can function. So I'm big on people's training systems, processes, so that if someone's ill, it doesn't matter, we can just move on, and things like that. I like that that term serving it doesn't matter, we can just move on and things like that.

Speaker 1:

I like that that term serving I think I've never heard that before and I really like it. I think it is important because I do that and that's probably where management has changed over time, because people have probably got into management now for different reasons. I think before that dictation model is virtually gone, I don't hear much of it anymore. I think people now become managers because they actually want to be a part of people's career, uh, which obviously is a motivating factor for you. Is that something? Did you develop that and realize that once you were thrust into management, or was that one of the reasons why you wanted to get into it?

Speaker 2:

I think that as I developed and I had I had a few good role models in some of the companies I've worked at you know people who you know they wanted to develop their teams and you know it's like that that older, that quote you see everywhere on linkedin sort of thing but you know getting people to a level where you know they could actually leave if they wanted to, because you trained them and developed them so well you know I like that.

Speaker 1:

I was saying, yeah, this is not. Yeah, people have a different mindset about that. Sometimes they're almost scared of people to leave. But exactly that you train people well enough that they leave you in a much better place than that than they started with. You know, you've been a you know the servant to your business. I like we'll delve back into my agent piece, but I'm really interested in 3d biotissues and I'm sure everyone else will as well. So can you tell us a little bit about the business, what it does, and then you probably have to speak to me like I'm a 10-year-old from this sort of stuff because we're going to learn together. So tell me a bit about 3D biotissues, please, mate.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so we're part of the BSF a group of companies. It's a larger company, but 3D biotiss tissues itself was a spin out from Newcastle University in 2019. So we've got Che Conlon, who's still a professor at the university now, but he's gradually pulling back from that. No-transcript stuff.

Speaker 1:

So so and there's that is so broad. You know you're going from that to meat to corneas. You know that I I'd imagine you could essentially hold you could go anywhere with that essentially. So how do you decide a business, which avenue to go down, based on what you do then?

Speaker 2:

I think, uh, being realistic, it's like you know what, what's, what's technically feasible based on you know, based on prior art and things like that, but then also looking at things of what is possible to you know, to patent as a way to, as a novel way of producing something. So one of our key products with the meat was that we didn't use any kind of, any kind of scaffold when we grow it. That makes sense. So it's, um, you know you're just producing like pure meat. You know it's not, you know, like mushroom based or plant based or something like that. So some companies doing interesting things with that, but it's uh, you get. There's lots of talk about things like mouth feel they like to talk about. You know how does it feel when you bite it? Because you know a key thing with meat is not just the taste, it's the texture. Yeah, yeah, and people can very quickly tell if something's off, if it's not, if it's not right, you know so how do you do that?

Speaker 1:

because obviously you know meat is meat for me, you know it's an animal, it's meat. So how is that formed in a lab? Tell me through exactly how that works.

Speaker 2:

It's like if you were to grow anything biologically. You'll start with like a cell growth media which contains things like glucose, growth factors and things like that. You'd then seed cells into that and then the cells will gradually multiply that and then they'll gradually, the cells will gradually multiply and eventually they'll start to form tissues. You know whether that is, you know skin meat, you know, or you know eyes, or anything really that's amazing, amazing, it's.

Speaker 1:

Uh, I know there's something we spoke about off air which I was going to bring up later, but I just want to talk about now. They are trying to, you're trying to. You are developing a leather which is made out of dinosaur. Is that correct?

Speaker 2:

uh, yes, so it's.

Speaker 2:

It's like so we take, like you know, obviously there's not a lot of dinosaur cells floating around I imagine we'll work with several uh external external groups and the experts and we're sort of essentially genetically modifying, you know, like current cells or related cells, and then we use them to express, like the material that will be used to grow the skin and it can be generally verifiable as being isolated as, like a, you know, dinosaur skin, amazing, amazing. But the beauty is is like it's actually a technology platform we're developing. So, in theory, you know, you can produce any kind of leather if you want to, because the thing that a lot of the cultivated leather companies looking at is a more exotic leather sort of thing. Yeah so, but you know what's more exotic than a dinosaur?

Speaker 1:

yeah. Well, there's gonna be people driving the car now thinking, right, jurassic, jurassic park. Screen back, this, this is, this is going to be jurassic park in real life.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, we had a lot of. We had a lot of intro. One of the consultants we deal with happened to be speaking to an automotive manufacturer. Yeah, and he mentioned that and they got very excited well, yeah, yeah, this is it.

Speaker 1:

is it? So? Has this ever been done before or tried to be done before?

Speaker 2:

There's a number of companies who are producing, like I say, lab-grown or cultivated leather. There's variations of all kinds, the technologies can be different, the way they manufacture it can be different, and things like that.

Speaker 1:

And what can it be used for? Because you know leather can be used for a variety of things. So I guess, and would it look and feel essentially like dinosaur leather would? What would it be used for?

Speaker 2:

Well, that's the challenge you know we deal with. Like you know, we're working with some of the large fashion houses and they want samples that'd be dyed. Does it look like leather? Does it feel like? Yeah, it's not like leather. You know that kind of thing. But uh, being with some of our leather, is that some of them are. You know, they can be quite thin compared to normal leather but still maintain that mechanical strength okay amazing.

Speaker 1:

So the the tiny old boys coming at me now I'm asking these sort of questions, but could this get to a level where you're making a, a watch, which is made out of T-Rex leather, for example? Can it be that specific?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly right. So it just allows us to produce a piece of leather. So then you can do anything. You know, if you wanted to create just a wrist strap with it, if you wanted to create a handbag or something like that, you can do.

Speaker 1:

Amazing, yeah, amazing, which that must be an exciting part of your job, I guess. I mean, is this sort of the reason why you got into what you do?

Speaker 2:

I think you know a lot of R&D team make it very excited about what they can and can't do. I'm very much an operational mindset so I'm very interested in the how are we going to do this rather than the what are we going to do if that makes sense.

Speaker 1:

And as a business, because when I look at that I think, well, that's just a business that's going to do unbelievably well financially, because there's going to be a lot of people out there who are going to want to spend a lot of money on having to say they've got a T-Rex watch on them. But then, obviously, the lab side you talk about corneas and that sort of piece, you talk about university. Then you think, actually, is it, you know? Is it a multifunctional purpose business to do different things? Is it profit-based? Where does that sort of sit? Because they're quite different, aren't they? I guess?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, like I say, we're part of a group of companies and you know we have 3D biotissues is mainly our R&D side of things but we also supply a couple of products for their function. It's called CityMix and CytoBoost. They're to help other companies when they're doing cell growth in agriculture. So the materials you need to grow the cells are very expensive, but using our product you can reduce their costs by, like you know, the growth factor is about like 70%, so it's a significant cost saving for them. It helps them get closer to parity with, you know, traditional meat and things like that and then sorry yeah, sorry.

Speaker 2:

And then, like this is a company, curato, they've just got a license agreement, I think, with canada for uh, growing, the growing the corneal cells and replacement corneas. There's a lot of interest now in the veterinary market, which is quite interesting for us because, you know, if you imagine, if you can uh, you can save an animal's eye if it's been injured, rather than uh, you know it's, it's great and obviously that leads into it and obviously animal testing is much simpler. You know to get into there's fewer hoops than it is for when you want to. You know human testing, but if we can prove the technology with animals, it's a much easier step to prove it with people as well.

Speaker 1:

So, and which is interesting then, because is that a big part of the future, that potentially you can be really massively affecting the lives of people very positively, because if you can do that with you know, with Cornelius, essentially you know could, that is that the next step, the roadmap for the business, then yeah, I think there's.

Speaker 2:

There's not only that, there's also like a product which is, you know, it's closest thing I could think to equate it to is like when autoglass repair your windscreen, you know, with the little gel, it's something like that they could use in someone's eye. So well, you know, someone's got a, you know, a significant eye injury. You could, in theory, you know, the paramedic comes along, just injects this material into their eye and then then they're fine, they may not even need surgery yeah, amazing, scaling business is difficult.

Speaker 1:

How did this you know? How did you get involved in this business? How did it start? Tell me about the sort of the early days and that side, because it's a fascinating business and very different to a, you know, generalist manufacturing or engineering business yeah, so so obviously, like the business was very uh, you know it was university startup.

Speaker 2:

Everyone within it was very academic. Uh, I joined because they wanted someone who could come in and had previously done like scale up of materials, that's you know, supply chains, processes, um facilities and things like that. So it's interesting for me because it's you know I've done. You know, like when it comes to the Axe and the Bell, where we're producing thousands and thousands of layers of paint but you know you're using like a forklift truck to bring pallets of you know raw materials in, whereas here, you know you've got, you know it's you know the scientists with pipette doing that. You know, doing your due diligence on people like that is very, very important, you know so it's funded by the university piece, the, the world of of scientists etc.

Speaker 1:

And people talk a lot about the, the skills gap in in the uk. They talk a lot about the skills gap in in the northeast. What's that like in that science field then? Are there enough people coming through that that route, or is that still a challenge?

Speaker 2:

I think it can be frustrating because I think we talked about it previously I think there still is the image of the North East we're all going in the shipyard, all the mines sort of thing, even though they're all pretty much gone. But I think it is improving. Obviously there's the old Wilton site down at Redcar. You've got the Biosphere in Newcastle and they're looking to build Biosphere 2, you know. So, which is great, because the problem is is that we have, you know, there is support for like what I'll call incubators, so for small startups and things like that. And then you've got places like Fujifilm and CPI and things like that. And then you've got places like Fujifilm and CPI and things like that. There's not really anything in the middle with some of the medium enterprise. So that can be a challenge.

Speaker 2:

I think the combined authority are really helping that now. Now you've got Newcastle, sunderland, gates, north Tyneside all working together because there was recently a meeting and it's looking at how can they help the uh, you know the science industry in the northeast, because you know there's a real shortage of like lab space, because you know the landlords are a bit risky version. They don't really want, you know, if they'd rather just build an office, which is much simpler to build, and they've got guaranteed, you know, to have someone in there. If they build a lab, it's a bit more of a risk for them and more expense initially yeah, of course is.

Speaker 1:

There is the cost of university now and and could that be a challenge, because I imagine the bulk of people you acquire will straight from university could that be a challenge now in terms of getting people to do the courses to be able to attract them into into these jobs?

Speaker 2:

I think we're quite lucky with newcastle. Uh, the Newcastle's got a very good biomedical science university, one of the best in the country, but a lot of people they end up moving south down to you know, the Golden Triangle, down right to Cambridge and Oxford and stuff, because that's where a lot of the companies are. Because you know, if you look at the funding profile it's massive down there compared to the northeast, as I'm sure most people in northeast would agree with. Yeah, and you also get a lot of venture capital companies. Unfortunately they are quite blinkered as well. They want people to. You know they'll find a company northeast they like, but then tell them they have to move everything down to you know, bedford or somewhere like that, or guildford, you know, because they want it to be closer to them but also closer to all the investment and stuff in that region.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but you're absolutely right, the North East has got so much going for it. But actually on that science piece, I mean you've got Net Park, obviously in Durham as well. You know it's a huge site. You've got some amazing businesses doing some great stuff and it's also one of those places where people relocate too. They never move out again, they never move from Northwicks because they don't appreciate the cost of living, what's up here the beaches, the parks, all that type of stuff it's huge. But it sounds to me like the government can probably do more to help that piece. Do you think in terms of help to scale that biotech world on that side?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it is. I mean, like I said, I think the local government is trying to help with that, just trying to make things easier with planning rules and change the usage of buildings and so on. But it could certainly be worth trying to accelerate things like the Biosphere 2, for example, or some other facilities around the North East for lab startups. That would be a big help because in newcastle and the northeast in general, if you, there's pretty much the biosphere and that's it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's great is it if people listen to this, thinking I'd love to get into this world, but do I have to go and completely retrain and get a degree and etc. Etc. Or do you think it's an area people can transfer into from other aspects of engineering and manufacturing, because you've had quite a varied career, adam, haven't you in that sense?

Speaker 2:

Yes, I mean I've worked in sort of a heavy industry, I mean chemistry, but with Axe and Abel I started working in the lab, but then I was helping with scale-up of products again. So that was, you know, taking stuff from the lab to the factory, to the shipyard. You know which was really interesting. But it's, I think, depending on the role. Some of the roles I think are quite niche, like the R&D team. You know, if we want someone to come in, you know they need to have, you know, a PhD in biomedical science and have worked in tissue engineering and cell culture and so on. But some of the wider roles you know if you've worked in manufacturing and and you know things like operations, it's, it's as much easier to move around. You know, if you've, if you've worked in a supply chain, you know it's. There's a lot of transferable skills there. If you've worked in a manufacturing facility where you know you're following sops and procedures, you know, again, it's all transferable. You've got to have the right person as well.

Speaker 1:

There's the right skills I'm very interested in in culture and how you build businesses and scale businesses culturally and making sure that's right. How challenging has that been and how important is that to the business to get the, the culture right, would you say yeah, I mean, we've got quite a small team, you know.

Speaker 2:

You know less than 20 people. So you know it's very important that someone is going to be like good fit personality-wise. So we take great care about that in the interview process. We'll have several people that interview any candidates, including people who are going to be working with them, not just people who they're going to be working for, because we want to make sure that there's going to be a personality clash, because obviously, if you have a small company, a personality clash can be a real problem. So we like to avoid that. And then we have, you know, the standard procedures in place to make sure that you know if someone is a bad hire.

Speaker 1:

You know we can uh, you know whether you know get them out before the probation period's finished or you know other other methods, shall we say, if they're after probation and so on yeah, it's how important, because I did a podcast earlier this week with a lady who's really concentrated on that diversity piece and making sure that she brings in people from different walks of life, different careers, different nationalities, and all that, given the very specific and niche what you do. How important is that diversity piece? Because your business is built purely around innovation, essentially, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

I think I think that that's what we're trying to get away from because, like I say when I jump, we're very academic and you know site and innovative and scientific. So, as you know, I came in as someone going well. You know, for example, what we can really do with. You know ic 9001 for all of our suppliers and stuff like that. And you know a lot of the people have come from academia. They've never really been exposed to you know 9001. It's trying to educate them about why something that's on paper is not particularly exciting or obvious, but it's important in the grand scheme of things.

Speaker 1:

Apologies for interrupting this episode with a very quick announcement about my business. Theo James are a specialist talent provider specifically to the manufacturing and engineering sector. I'm incredibly proud of what we've achieved since our inception in 2015. We specialize in roles from semi-skilled trades right the way up to our TJ exec search arm of the business. Both on the contract and permit side, we offer both bespoke one-off campaigns for heart of full roles or a full partnership service where we become an extension of your business. For any information, please get in touch with me or the team. I hope you enjoy the rest of the episode. Thank you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so you're right Diversity. I think diversity of experience is very important.

Speaker 1:

And how do you you you know you talk about the team's piece and making sure you know you manage them lead them well, how do you create a space where people can innovate? Because I imagine the business you're in, it can go so many different directions that it would be, you know, quite a challenge sometimes. So you can't listen to every single idea. You do listen to every day, but you can't take every, every single idea you have. How do you create that space where people can innovate and bring sort of ideas to the table?

Speaker 2:

you say yeah, I think we try to do things where you know everyone's encouraged to offer up ideas and improvement. You know it goes for everything from like an improvement suggestion system, where someone's got an idea for how they can make things better. They can flag that to the manufacturing director, to myself, the R&D director. We're also able to do what we call like business opportunity forms. So someone's got an idea for you know how they can work on it. It's a case of I think we should be doing this, it'll cost this, it needs this and allow us to do this, and then it can get you know, signed off and agreed by by one of the directors, for example. Yeah, it's a you know has. It has to work for the business obviously.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, okay, excellent. One of my bugbearers in not just manufacturing but most businesses is the lack of training that leaders have. They are normally thrust into the role because they're good at their job, so they should be good to manage people. Have you, I guess, in your career, have you seen that along the way where people have just been pushing to room and said you're?

Speaker 2:

great what you do. You're now a manager. Yeah, you see that they sell so many people. You know they are good at their job, but you know they're they're sort of no one's have explained to them what to do when you know a member of the team comes in in tears one morning because they're you know the cat's been run over. You know how do I deal with that because you know a lot of places. If you work at a larger company, you just hand them over, you know. You just ask them to speak to HR. They've had all that training smaller companies. It can be a challenge, you know, but just, you know you try to be uh, try to be fair and reasonable. Also, we look at things about, you know, because there's a lot of some quite good stuff done by innovate uk. There's sort of um like peer group sessions and things like that, where people come together, share experience and, you know, bring out ideas and problems and we can all work together for a solution for them and things like that yeah, excellent.

Speaker 1:

I've had a lot of good things about innovate uk as well, so that's a that's a good. A good plug is that is that um, are they connected to your business or did you engage with them to to assist on that side?

Speaker 2:

we've engaged with them a lot on various grants and uh things like that. But also, you know they do, they approach us, you know, like either to our ceo or to myself for the r&d director, for example, someone that they would like to have involved in one of these sessions, you know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, excellent. How do you think your leadership style has changed over the years? Because I'm always interested in the evolution of, because I'm a very different leader today than I was 15, 20 years ago. There's still loads of work to do, but I appreciate it's different. How do you think yours has changed over time?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think I used to have an issue that I kind of adopted a one-size-fits-all to everybody. So over the years I've come to appreciate that everyone needs a different tactic when you're leading them. You can't just Some people need an arm around them, some people need a handheld, some people need a shove in the back to get them going, and things like that. And a simple thing some people work best when they're given, you know, a good, good degree of autonomy. Some people need just a list this is what you're doing this week, this month, you know, these are your objectives for the month, and things like that. Yeah, yeah. And also, you know people have different, uh, different drives, different motivations. You know it's. Uh, you know people have different drives, different motivations. You know it's a lot easier if you've got someone who just works in the warehouse and just wants a bit of overtime, you know that's his motivation. But when you've got like a young graduate who wants to develop their career, you know it's not always about money with some people.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 2:

They want to work for an interesting company where they've got good training opportunities and development opportunities and things like that is about money with some people.

Speaker 1:

yeah, yeah, they want to work for an interesting company where they've got good, good training opportunities and development opportunities, things like that it's a skill, isn't like, say, it's a skill which you pick up that emotional intelligence to understand where they're, what they're motivated by. And, like you say, you know, it's a really good example with. You know, if someone's pet is unwell, sometimes people you know, some people go deal with it, but actually for someone that might be such a big deal. That person might not have kids, that person might live alone, that pet might be with him for 13 years and that that person could be so thrown by that that it's going to affect them and and it's it's it's knowing, understanding people's triggers, and and that takes time, I think is lead to learn, doesn't it?

Speaker 2:

yeah, I think that you know that the pet one's a good example, because it's a case of, you know, we had it at our place a few weeks ago. One of their, one of their teams, their, their mother's dog had died and it's kind of like, you know, in one way you think, well, so what? But then it's obviously it's not the pet, it's his mother. Yeah, you know, his mother's extremely upset. She needs someone to, you know, keep an eye on her and that kind of thing, you know.

Speaker 1:

So it is. It's management, I think, in many ways is a lot harder than it used to be now because we obviously this it's so multifaceted before it's um, but I think people are much better managers for that and then for me, we people will be more developed than they used to be. So I completely, completely agree the business is really exciting and I can see the business and you know that alone. What you're doing there with that leather is amazing. Where do you see it going? What's the sort of the next roadmap looking like for the business? What do you say?

Speaker 2:

What are you excited about? So we've got, you know, currently talking to a number of investors about, you know, like a five-year plan, 10-year plan and then the scalability of the product. So it's a case of making enough to let us create good quality, like small-scale samples that we can sell to people, and then scaling that up to making rolls of material so it can be sold at scale.

Speaker 1:

Right, amazing. How much is a T-Rex watch going to cost me then?

Speaker 2:

I can't comment at the moment, but it won't be cheap.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I imagine it'll sell quite a few. Look, and this is stuff that this is why I love doing this podcast, because who would have an idea there's a business like yours around the corner from someone who's manufacturing stuff like this in a lab? It's incredible, but this is the stuff that kids need to know about. Young people need to know about, because how excited are they going to be by something like this? They just are, aren't they?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, I think that's one thing we're quite lucky with. There's a few companies, I think, in the Northeast that are like that there's ourselves, there's ourselves. There's people like QuantumDX. You've got people doing very interesting technology and exciting technology, which is also a benefit to people too.

Speaker 1:

It is we're going to say, because people have got different purposes. Now. Some people could want to work for a company because they're so excited by something like that, because, as a child, that's what they're interested in. Another person loves animals and if they know that you're making something or something in the lab which is going to have a positive impact on animals, like a cunny, then they want to be part of that. So you know and that's another thing as a leader, you need to understand what people are driven by. For someone else it might just be you're a really sustainable company with great values and they want to work free on that.

Speaker 2:

It's huge yeah, exactly right there's a few um.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes I end this podcast with some quickfire questions which are which I shall do, if that's okay uh, which you've not been warned about. So here we go. The uh um you mentioned at the start. You've had some great leaders. Who's the best manager you've ever had and why, would you say?

Speaker 2:

I think, uh, I think it's an awkward one because obviously there's like there's different bits from different people. You know, I used to work with a fantastic lady when I worked for a company in the railway, in the defense sector. She sort of explained about, um, well, I think, emotional resilience, shall we call it. You know dealing with really tight deadlines and you know difficult customers, difficult teams and things like that. So she really helped with. You know how you plan stuff, how you uh, you know how you recover from things and things like that, and you know how you, how you cover yourself, you know when the, when the board aren't giving you the support you need. Yeah, it could be a challenge like that, so that was a good one. Another person who was fantastic at bringing you know different, very diverse people together to work together for a common goal, which I thought was very exciting, appealed from like operations, r&d finance, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1:

Excellent. Worst day ever as a leader. What do you say? Worst?

Speaker 2:

day ever as a leader, what do you say? Worst day? I think it's when someone that I'd put a lot of effort into trying to develop and then they just spat their dummy out one day, stormed out and that was it. So it was quite, uh, quite, quite, quite disappointing that, yeah if you could wave a magic wand, how would you improve?

Speaker 1:

norm? It's the engineering, manufacturing, science world. What, how, what would you do to improve things if you could do? For 3d bt or just in general uh, just in general, which would help out your industry, would you say?

Speaker 2:

I think it's trying to bring together the opportunities that the businesses have. So it's bringing together, you know, the R&D people, the people who can provide like support, like the facilities, the infrastructure and things like that and the finance people Excellent, you know the help with the funding and so on.

Speaker 1:

And just finally, if you could recommend any book, audio book, podcast, anything else you'd recommend which has helped you along the way, would you say?

Speaker 2:

I can't think of the title. Off the top of my head it was. I'm afraid I can't right now.

Speaker 1:

I'll dig it out, oh yeah, when it gets released, you can put it in the comment section. So, no good man, it's perfect. And what would you say you're most excited about about 3D biotissues in the next sort of 18 months? What's really exciting, you?

Speaker 2:

I think we're moving, you know, moving part of our lab into like a new facility with a new infrastructure and stuff to support the scale up of our products. That's quite exciting lots of new equipment, new toys and things like that.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for this. It's been so fascinating. Adam, I mentioned before that we don't know what's on our doorstep and this is why I talk about all the time. This is why companies need to engage with with schools, with with colleges, with parents, to to make sure that people do understand what's in their doorstep. Because the northeast, the uk, it's a fantastic place.

Speaker 1:

We have our challenges, but we're we're creating engineers, scientists and in all sorts of wonderful industries, and this is a key example of a business which is doing just mind-blowing things, which is both important and fun at the same time. And I think, if you can, you know, as a business, you've you've got both those. You know, you're innovating, you're doing things which are just good, fun and and amazing. You know, if you think that I, I can't wait to hear the first piece of leather watch strap on dying so, but actually you're also doing, some of which are which got some real purpose, which is helping people's lives, which is so important. So, um, I'm so excited to see the business and the business flourish. What's the best way to contact you or indeed the business, if anyone wants to get involved?

Speaker 2:

I think the simplest thing for us is our info. Email address is info at 3dbiotissuescom and I show people we do. It does get monitored. We do look at emails that come in. That's a really good starting point. Or just come to go to our website and you'll see all the information there.

Speaker 1:

Excellent, perfect, well. Thank you, adam, that was really helpful. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

No, thanks for having me, mark you take care.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for listening or watching this episode of the Manufacturing Leaders podcast. Please just like or subscribe. It really helps grow the show and obviously improve the industry. If you want any more information about Theo James, as I mentioned midway through the episode, please get in touch with me or the team. I would love to talk about how it can help you directly or your business. We are more than just a recruiter and I know people say that, but it's something I'm incredibly passionate about. We are in business for much more than just a bums on seats approach. We want to help people grow, we want to help improve their lives and, ultimately, I want to work with businesses and people who share the same values as we do, and that's something I'm incredibly passionate about. So please, if that is you and you are passionate about that dream role or passionate about your people, please get in touch with me or the team. I would absolutely love to talk a bit more detail. Thank you very much. Speak soon.