Business profile: Mike Newton

Feb 26 2008 Alex Turner

THERE aren’t many company bosses that will admit to enjoying having their head in the clouds, but Mike Newton is one of them.

The chief executive of Warrington-based AD Group has been a qualified pilot since 1994 and has been at the forefront of his company’s diversification into private charter jet hire.

AD Aviation is just one arm of AD Group, which employs 650 people worldwide and made a £7.1m profit on an £84.1m turnover in the year to June, 2006. Last month, the Duke of Kent was the guest of honour as the company officially opened its new headquarters at Daresbury, where more than 150 staff are based.

But it is in the skies that the company is seeking to expand and its aviation division has recently added a third jet to its fleet based at Liverpool John Lennon Airport.

It was quite a journey for Mr Newton. Together with pilot Jason Stone, he completed the 5,000-mile trip to bring the jet back from Texas, via Indiana, Canada and Iceland, before arriving in Liverpool.

But that’s nothing compared to the journey taken over the last quarter-of-a-century which began in snooker halls.

Mr Newton set up Dedicated Micros in 1982 and started with a CCTV device which monitored how long players spent at the tables.

The company was soon supplying equipment to watch the bar takings as well, which led to the development of the multi- channel CCTV recorder in 1985.

Today, more than 7m images are recorded every second of every day around the world using Dedicated Micros equipment.

An important part of this business is in the aerospace industry, as AD’s CCTV systems monitor the exterior of aircraft and enable flight crews on jets to make checks before cockpit doors are opened.

The move into the commercial airline sector, and the requirement to be able to service the equipment on aeroplanes across Europe, led to the creation of AD Aviation in 1998.

“We are based here in Daresbury but the customer base is spread across Europe,” said Mr Newton.

“Rather than setting up service centres across Europe to offer back-up to our airline clients, which otherwise would have required a large team physically on the ground, we decided a more efficient route would be to use a fleet of private jets which could fly UK-based engineers directly, on demand, to the airports where customers were based and rapidly install new systems or solve any potential problems.

“In many cases, when our engineers landed, they could simply walk a few hundred feet from our jet and then start work and when they were finished fly back to the UK.”

This approach helped to improve the engineers’ ability to solve the problems they faced on the ground.

“We took a Thunderbirds approach,” said Mr Newton. “We can have a few different solutions on board with our engineers, which is completely impractical to do on a scheduled flight. It really helped us to establish AD Aviation as one of the key players in the sector.”

From there, it was a small step to offering this service to other businesses in the region who needed to be able to travel quickly and without a fuss to Europe.

“We were using it very successfully for our own business needs and felt that there would be plenty of other business users in the Manchester-Liverpool corridor that would see the same benefits,” he said.

And not only does the Citation Eagle II jet expand the fleet, but it also expands the range of destinations that can be reached.

“We can go far farther than was previously possible in this sort of size or class or aircraft,” said Mr Newton.

“In this aircraft, we can get as far as Moscow in the east or Casablanca to the south so really anywhere in Europe and the immediate periphery beyond that.

“Take, for example, someone wanting to go the farther distance like Moscow. Normally, you would have to go for a much larger aircraft and still probably only be able to have four passengers on board.

“What we have been trying to achieve with AD Aviation is to make sure the business charter is a cost-effective and accessible solution and not a perk for the superstars.”

However, working in the fast lane has not been enough to sate his appetite for speed, and Mr Newton also indulges in his passion for motorsport.

“I got involved in motorsport back in 1977 when I started working as part of the safety crew as a trackside marshall,” he said.

“That made me want to be on the other side of the barrier. In 1979-80, I started doing the odd speed event and in 1984 I took part in my first circuit race in Formula Ford.”

Unsurprisingly for such a driven man, Mr Newton was never going to be content with merely taking part, and in 2005 and 2006 he was part of the driving team that won the Le Mans 24-hours race in the LMP2 class.

Last year, he missed out on a hat-trick of triumphs but the disappointment was softened by clinching the championship for the first time after missing out by a point in the previous two seasons.

But the racing isn’t just for enjoyment as it has real benefits for the business as well. Mr Newton said: “Among all the excitement, our involvement in motorsport actually has real business benefits for us as a platform to build relationships with customers in key markets.

“Guests have exclusive access to the company's latest innovations and product road maps presented at business workshops throughout the event and have privileged access to hospitality areas right at the heart of the action.

“The upshot of this is that we can actually see a marked increase in orders from key customers as a result of their attendance at an event, significantly above the amount we actually put into our motorsport programme.”