A FORMER President of Bolton & Bury Chamber of Commerce has retired as company secretary at Vernacare in Bolton. Mr Frank Coucill, aged 61, joined the company in 1965 and helped it develop to the point where it dominates the human waste disposal industry in public and independent healthcare. Vernacare, which makes pulp disposable bedpans and urine bottles, now exports to 32 countries throughout the world.

Mr Coucill joined the then Vernon and Company (Pulp Products) as office manager and was group company secretary by 1967.

Unusually these days, he remained in the same job for 33 years.

He said: "At the beginning, I did everything - accounts, secretarial, insurance, pensions, admin and so on.

"But as you expand, people specialise and this is probably why my post is not being continued, but fragmented."

Before he married in 1961 he lived at his parents' pub, the Dun Mare Inn at Little Hulton.

He went to Farnworth Grammar where he gained 10 GCE '0' levels and three 'A' levels before opting to study chemistry at Liverpool University.

After three years he left without a degree.

"This is the bit I gloss over," he says.

"Too much time playing darts and snooker...."

After a spell as a teacher during National Service he took a Chartered Secretary correspondence course and did some book-keeping for an old-established furniture and carpet retailer in Bolton.

Although he has now left Vernacare, Mr Coucill, who lives in Harwood, is continuing as a council member of the Chamber of Commerce and as a member of the Bolton Business School Advisory Council.

His wife Ruth and daughters Hayley and Suzanne run a dress shop, MEA Fashion, in Bolton town centre.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.