Speaker Don MacLeod

Rotary club of Stirling meeting of 7th November.

President Sandy Farquharson welcomed members to the Thursday evening meeting and announced donations to the William Simpson Care Home at Plean, the Salvation Army, Start Up Stirling and to a Wallace High School pupil headed for Zambia to help with local projects. These were all approved by members present.

Thanks, were tendered to the Inner Wheel Club for organising a most enjoyable evening of ten - pin bowling. The ladies won on the night, which caused a little unhappiness among members, who will hope to improve on the return fixture.
Delivery of the "shoeboxes" is to take place this week. These are filled with items gathered by members and destined for impoverished communities in Eastern Europe, please see photo of 2 pupils from Riverside Primary School loading the last 2 boxes in next week's report.
Our speaker for the evening was Rotarian Don MacLeod who described life at the other end of his daily commute to Dundee. He started by telling us, depressingly, how much more rain we get here than on the east coast. It is colder there though!
Don is Chief Finance Officer for the company ATL who repair and refurbish components for gas turbine engines. This is big business. These components are extremely expensive to make and so for the operators having them refurbished is very financially viable. As a result ATL is in the top 20 of British exporting companies with a current turnover of 7.2 million pounds. It employs 85 people.
He passed round samples of the intricate castings involved. Customers for this service are the power generation industry, marine and aerospace both civil and defence. The biggest proportion of the work is to Rolls Royce engines.
Don continued with an impressive description of the workings of a gas turbine engine and a run through the procedures involved in repairing and refurbishing the parts. It was clear that this is highly specialised precision work undertaken by very few competitors and is another example of an impressive enterprise which very few of us know about.
The vote of thanks was delivered by Derek Anderson and was enthusiastically endorsed by members.

Next Friday's meeting is a business meeting following the Council meeting on Monday
Crawford.