Louisa Burdett has stepped down as non-executive director and audit committee chair
Inside Spirax Group’s plant in Cheltenham(Image: Hannah Baker)
A major Cheltenham engineering group has announced its finance chief has stepped down from the board of one of its major distributors. London-listed Spirax confirmed on Monday (February 2) that Louisa Burdett had left the board of RS Group Plc – a FTSE-250 distributor of industrial and electrical products based in London – on January 31.
Ms Burdett joined the board of RS Group in 2017, according to its website, and has a background in financial, commercial, M&A and risk management. She served as a non-executive director and audit committee chair.
Ms Burdett was previously chief financial officer of Croda International; chief financial officer of Meggitt; group finance director at Victrex; and chief financial officer at Optos and the Financial Times Group.
She joined Cheltenham-headquartered Spirax Group, a FTSE 100 company, in 2024.
Spirax is made up of three businesses – steam thermal, electric thermal and fluid technology – and employs some 10,000 staff across 68 countries. It has 30 manufacturing plants around the world.
In November, the company warned over the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. The group said at the time the lack of certainty was “dampening business confidence” and demand for larger projects.
The company reported a fall in profits last August amid a “challenging macroeconomic environment”. The business saw statutory revenue dip by one per cent to £822.2m for the six months to June 30, while profit before tax fell to £87.9m from £124.8m the year before.
Spirax carried out a restructure last year which it said would realise annual savings of around £35m that would be used to fund investment in future organic growth.