Unipart

Unipart Group is a multinational logistics, supply chain, manufacturing and consultancy company head-quartered in Cowley, Oxfordshire, England. It has operations in Europe, North America, Australia and Japan and works across a variety of sectors that include automotive, rail, marine and leisure.

Originally part of the state-owned conglomerate British Leyland (BL), Unipart was demerged from BL in 1987 and is now partially employee-owned and is one of the largest privately owned companies in the UK.

History

Unipart as it operates its business today was formed in 1974 by John Egan. State-controlled British Leyland put him in charge of their Unipart parts and service division, let him make it independent and brand it Unipart. The use of the Unipart brand to market service parts for British Leyland vehicles was similar in concept to Ford's Motorcraft brand. The next year British Leyland was nationalised. Egan left in 1976 to join Massey Ferguson.

Then 29-year-old John Neill replaced Egan and he continued Egan's policy of providing the same logistical services to its parent's competitors as well as to British Leyland. In 1987, shortly after British Leyland had been re-privatised as the Rover Group, Neill led a management buyout of Unipart, in part financed by a wider employee buy-in. Unipart is now 70% owned by its workforce and pension fund, the other 30% is held by sympathetic institutions.