‘When my son said he might go into the family business, I cried’

Old transformers waste a lot of energy and Wilson is on a mission to make the most energy-efficient ones possible. She says the latest models can save organisations more than 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions when they replace old, energy-guzzling versions. Customers include the University Hospital of South Manchester, Edinburgh University, Tesco and Unilever, who use the transformers to save energy and reduce operating costs.

The core products are made in India, where skilled labour is available and affordable, with transformers bound for the UK market sent to Wilson’s headquarters for customisation and finishing. The UK still makes up the lion’s share of sales, hitting £80 million last year, but India is growing quickly, with sales of £20 million, up from £5 million in 2023. The company employs nearly 500 people, with 340 of them based in Chennai.

“India has been a labour of love. It’s been 18 years we’ve had that factory and it’s only just making a profit,” said Wilson, the third generation of the family to lead the business since it was started in 1946 by her grandfather Richard Wilson. For 13 years she was joint managing director with her cousin, Simon Wilson, until she bought him out of the business in May 2021, becoming the majority shareholder.

The 45-year-old credits her father, Colin, with the original vision for the India operation. “He said, ‘We needed a secure supply of transformers and the problem with having a supplier is that they could one day say, ‘I’m not supplying you any more.’ ” She said the recent growth in sales both in the UK and India was partly due to customers’ focus on improving energy efficiency and the drive to net zero. A deliberate move to target customers in the renewable energy sector in India had also paid off, said Wilson. “We used to sell transformers just to smaller industrial customers, but the margins weren’t very good.”

In the UK market, Wilson said the company’s rich heritage helped it stand out against newer competitors. “We’ve been able to deliver transformers more quickly than our competition but have also forged relationships over a long period of time.” Wilson’s transformers have been used in large infrastructure projects including the Dogger Bank wind farm, the world’s largest offshore wind farm just off the coast of Hull, and Harmony Energy’s Pillswood, the biggest battery storage project in Europe, which was completed in August 2023 and can store enough energy to power 300,000 homes. “We’ve got 28 transformers in Pillswood. In the old days, if I got an order for three, I’d be delighted,” Wilson said.

The business has come a long way since she joined as an apprentice in 1997 when it had annual sales of about £10 million. She had briefly flirted with the idea of becoming a vet, but changed her mind after finding work experience at a local practice — “highly boring”.

Although her father was delighted when she took an interest in the family firm “there was no pressure whatsoever to join”, said Wilson. “It was like, ‘If you want to join the business, fine. If you don’t want to join the business, that’s also fine.’ ”

As an apprentice she learnt how the products were built, which remains important for relationships with both colleagues and customers, she said. “It was all about starting at the bottom, cutting your teeth, being alongside the guys and understanding the product, because you can’t go out and sell something if you don’t know what it is you’re selling — especially being female, people see straight through you.”

Where Wilson was being primed to head up sales, her cousin Simon, who was already a director by the time she joined, was more focused on operational and technical aspects of the business.

Wilson said the formative years of her career were the hardest, prompting her, at times, to consider if it had been the right decision to join. “I found it very, very, very hard to gain respect in the industry and not be seen as the boss’s daughter. I worked so hard to prove myself.” She says her dad “was always there to support me” but much of it had to simply be learnt on the job.

She remembered one episode in particular where she was dispatched to deal with a disgruntled customer whose order was running late. “When I got to the boardroom there were ten men around the table and me. I was only 22 or 23 and I was very apologetic, and told them we would do better. And then I went out and sat in the car and burst into tears. I called my dad and said, ‘That was horrendous,’ And he said, ‘You’ll get used to it.’ ”

She said it had been harder still to gain respect in India, with senior staff initially struggling with a female boss, but the results since Wilson took over the reins as sole managing director are speaking for themselves. “I finally got the eureka moment last week where [one of them] said, ‘Bloody hell, Erika, you’ve done really well.’”

That’s not to say there aren’t challenges ahead. Measures announced in Rachel Reeves’ recent budget including increased national insurance contributions for employers will add cost, with Wilson still weighing up how to offset them.

She does not want to lower staff wage rises or remove an annual profit share incentive scheme, which she says helps to retain staff. “It depends on what the competition does. We will have to see what way the market goes and how it shapes pricing in future.”

Like many family business owners, she’s incensed by the addition of inheritance tax to the transfer of business assets from one generation to the next. “It’s horrific,” she said, adding that it’s forcing her father, who remains a shareholder, to consider his options. “His plans have got to change completely. Don’t get me wrong, taxes are needed, but let’s be reasonable.”

If it’s been a struggle for Wilson to succeed in the male-dominated industry, she is hoping to make it a little smoother for the next generation of women. In India, she’s just hired 50 female graduate training engineers, and it will be announced this week that she has been appointed the first female president of Beama, the trade body for energy infrastructure and systems, which she hopes will inspire younger women entering the industry.

As for Wilson Power Solutions, there’s a chance it could become a fourth generation family business if one or more of Wilson’s three sons, aged 14, 11 and 7, decide to sign up. The oldest, Archie, recently asked his mother to explain more about the business after which he said, ‘that sounds really cool. I might be interested [in joining]. And I started crying,” she said. “We will have to see but it could be a fourth-generation, and that would be amazing. It’s such a lot of history after 78 years. I’m immensely proud of it and I love the business. I am very lucky.”