Kate Swanepoel
Customer Service

Kate joined Inokor in 2021, having returned to Ireland from Johannesburg in South Africa, where she had lived for 31 years. Her role combines customer service activities with the experience she gained at a large audit firm in South Africa where she was responsible for governance and compliance, as well as policies and procedures. “Now I am involved with so many areas of our activities. I love the good working relationships and team spirit with both colleagues and customers,” she explains.  

When an order comes in, Kate follows its progress through production to despatch and delivery. It means that if there are any questions or issues, she is the point of contact for the customer and knows exactly what’s going on. She also manages production schedules for some of our insulation products and handles compliance aspects of customer orders, checking contracts and drawings are all in place and up to date.

Film sets and Christmas stars 

Kate enjoys seeing orders progress through to delivery and having an insight into how products are used. Depending on the season, she will be busy with moulded polystyrene packaging pieces as well as fish box orders. Closer to Christmas, she handles demands for stars and other one-off seasonal shapes. When filming for a Russell Crowe movie was happening at a nearby castle, the production company placed orders for blocks of polystyrene which were shaped for film sets.  

She is guided in her activities by the organisational culture. “We are part of Kingspan Group, a strong brand in Ireland, which is compliance and quality orientated and focuses on customer solutions. I align everything I do with that, which ties in with my ambition to deliver the best possible customer experience,” she explains. “Whatever the request, we always explore how we can fulfil it. That’s another reason why I enjoy working here - it is a problem-solving environment.”  

The recent introduction of a new order platform has left Kate dreaming of a breakthrough to fully automate the ordering process. “I would love for orders to pass automatically through the system to delivery without requiring any human intervention,” she says.

Planet Passionate comes to life

Kate has seen the site change to meet the company’s Planet Passionate pledges. “Our site is located by a river and we have a hydro turbine producing renewable energy,” she says. “Across the company, energy-saving projects are under way and last year, we started a wildflower garden. There are regular talks organised encouraging us all to be more green.”