Burnley company CoolKit double senior appointments as business continues to grow with total year sales forecast to hit £15m.

The UK’s largest manufacturer of temperature-controlled vans has welcomed Daniel Miller as its first-ever finance director and Danny Hough as head of technical and development.

Experienced finance specialist, Daniel Miller, joins the company from Finnish paper and energy technology supplier, Valmet, where he most recently held the position of UK managing director.

He joins CoolKit’s senior management team and will oversee the company’s strategic finance and planning, focusing on digital transformation and driving continued growth for the business which recently reported that its Q1 sales orders for new converted vans were up by 75%, with total year sales forecast to hit £15m.

Daniel said: “I’m very excited to be working with CoolKit, a company with so much potential. The team is full of fantastic people with a culture of quality, care and attention across every department.

"My job is to build on this extremely successful foundation and look for new ways of working through digital transformation tools, data capture and analysis. I also will be working with the management team to design strategies that will help CoolKit continue its current excellent growth trajectory and, critically, support the business to implement the targets, actions and budgetary performance required to achieve those strategies.”

Danny Hough, a qualified mechanical engineer, will be responsible for the product design and development side of the business. Bringing skills gained throughout his career journey from toolmaker’s apprentice to manager, he will focus on fostering innovation.

He said: “I hope to apply my experience both tactically and strategically to develop a culture where we positively challenge ways of working across the design and manufacturing process, and ask if there are ways that we can do things even better to improve our products.”

Rupert Gatty, CoolKit’s CEO and founder, said that Daniel and Danny will be instrumental in helping to take the business forward.

“Hiring our first finance director is a strategic move which signals a step-change for our business. We have seen huge demand for our products post-Covid from our customers across the food and pharmaceutical industries and are substantially outperforming the performance trend of the light commercial vehicle industry (LCV) at large.”