Tong expands sales force with new sales manager and sales support roles

As part of the company’s ongoing growth and development strategy, Tong has boosted its sales team with the appointment of a new Sales Manager who will help drive sales throughout the UK and overseas.

Richard Knighton has joined the company with over 30 years experience in root crop industry, originally starting his career in 1988 when he joined Key Agricultural.

With roles in various departments across the business, Richard expanded his engineering experience and qualifications before moving to Standen Engineering. Richard has since held sales roles at Thurlow Nunn Standen, his own company Knighton Farm Machinery, and latterly Grimme UK.

Richard will be using this wealth of experience in his new role at Tong, dealing with new and existing customers to expand the business’s customer base in all areas of post-harvest handling, from crop loading, cleaning and grading, to turnkey washing and processing solutions.

Based at Tong Engineering’s office in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, Richard will spend much of his time visiting customers to discuss and develop their equipment needs.

Edward Tong, Managing Director at Tong Engineering:

“Richard is a valuable addition to our sales team and will help us reach our sales targets for 2018 and beyond. Our range of handling equipment is advancing all the time, with more new product developments in the pipeline to further increase the efficiency of the potato and vegetable handling process.”

“With this in mind, we want to ensure we maintain close communication with new and existing customers to keep them up to date with the equipment advances and efficiencies that Tong has to offer. Bringing Richard into the sales force will help us to continue to achieve this.”

“With the addition of a new Sales Manager, we have also reinforced our sales support team, bringing in two new sales support roles based at our Spilsby office.”

“Shannon Taylor and Harriet Smith have settled in very quickly and look forward to supporting the sales team on proposal work and new orders.”

Richard Knighton:

“Tong Engineering is a leading manufacturer of vegetable handling machinery.”

“Having spent most of my career involved in root crop handling equipment sales, the opportunity to work for a highly respected manufacturer like Tong is very exciting.”

“I am very much looking forward to being part of the company’s growth across its wide range of advanced equipment.”

“I have been very fortunate to work with some fantastic people and customers throughout my career, and I look forward to continuing and developing that at Tong Engineering.”