Charlotte Blant is the CEO and Founder of Tiro Training, a specialist provider of science and technology apprenticeships across England. She leads the design of employer-led programmes from Level 3 through to degree level in applied chemical, materials, and bioscience - ensuring workforce development is driven by real industry need, not academic abstraction. Her work tackles the growing gap between the skills industry needs and the capability currently available, particularly in polymers and plastics.
Through Tiro’s specialist programmes, purpose-built for industry, Charlotte works with employers to build practical capability in areas such as materials performance, processing, and sustainable manufacturing, ensuring apprenticeships keep pace with evolving technologies and expectations.
With experience across SMEs through to FTSE250 organisations, she brings a pragmatic, high-expectation approach to skills development - ensuring learning translates into performance, productivity, and progression in the workplace. Charlotte advocates for a more integrated, employer-led skills system - one that recognises that developing advanced technical capability is not a pipeline issue alone, but a design challenge. Her work focuses on getting that design right.
Limited L&D budgets often gatekeep learning, high course fees, travel costs, and the practical reality that someone has to keep production running while others are away. As a result, only a small proportion of people in our sector receive regular, structured training, which contributes to low retention, skills gaps, and greater difficulty in hiring.
Learning Objectives
This talk explores the idea of a collaborative learning network for the plastics industry, showing how accessible, bite-sized education can improve confidence, communication and decision-making across technical and non-technical roles. It will prove the importance of collaboration as the key to building a more skilled, resilient plastics industry.
