Meet the new Clerk

We welcomed and approved the nomination of a new clerk at the Annual General Meeting in May - John Lovatt. 

John Lovatt

John Lovatt

I am honoured and delighted to be appointed your new clerk. I believe that I bring three things Q&B can benefit from: long industrial experience of business at the coal face; facing the moral and financial challenges of working in manufacturing industry; a deep faith and Quaker convincement.
 As joint Managing Director with my brother David, I built up the family business manufacturing ceramic kiln furniture from 80 employees to 350, with the turnover tripled during 6 years. This involved major reorganisation of the Sales and Marketing function of the company, setting up agencies worldwide, appointment of Sales team and General Sales Manager, Sales Office Support, CAD/CAM Design Systems, Pricing Systems, Computerisation of quotation and order entry, and also integrating into production control. Major re-design of products (see Patents, below). Negotiations with bankers.
I then negotiated the sale of technology and the design and construction of a new kiln furniture factory in Jingdezhen, China, and a Mullite plant in Zibo, Shandong, China. Then designed and negotiated a contract for a complete Bone China factory producing 6m pieces per year, in Tangshan, China, and then directed the successful commissioning of the Bone China plant, including selection of commissioning management, equipment supplier contracts, liaison with Chinese management, resolving of commissioning problems, with 80% full capacity reached within 9 months of startup. I then personally designed, directed and successfully negotiated contracts for 7 complete sanitaryware plants with Ministry of Building Materials, Beijing, China. But due to Chinese financing problems, re-negotiated down to one sanitaryware plant, which was successfully commissioned over a two year period.
Complete factory negotiations included arranging finance and negotiations with bankers and insurance companies and intimate knowledge of project financing. I have seven patents to my name, a Cambridge Graduate and the highest available qualification in ceramic management technology. The work included project financial predictions, Critical Path Analysis and management of project staff.
More recently, I served for 6 years as treasurer for the UK Charity Third Order Society of St Francis (1700 members).
A Quaker by convincement I joined the Friends in 2016, but have been a member of Quakers and Business since 2001 and have looked after the Quaker Bank Project (now the Quaker Credit Union project) since 2011!

I look forward to meeting you and working with you soon. 

Our outgoing co-clerks, Elize Sakamoto and Roland Carn, stood down in May 2024. We thank them for the hard work they put into supporting the group through the difficulties in the wake of the pandemic and they will be missed for their  good humour, friendly professionalism and dedication to the aims of Quakers and Business.