Rudling has stepped down from his role as managing director of operations and has also announced his retirement next April as chief executive officer of Gurit Composite Technologies - the Switzerlandbased company that now owns SP. He said he planned an active retirement, including sport and travelling and will continue to live in Calbourne on the Isle of Wight.

"SP is at one of the most exciting times it has ever been in terms of the contracts coming up, so it has been a hard decision to step down, " he said, "but there are a lot of things I want to do and I took the decision that if I wanted to do those, then I could not carry on doing what I was doing at SP."

The company started by making composites for highperformance race boats and Rudling said he felt it was still the best in the world in that industry.

Latterly SP has become involved in the alternative energy market, producing wind turbines.

"These are large, highperformance structures also, so it made sense for us to get involved, " said Rudling, who is married with four children.

He will be replaced by Graham Harvey, the former head of the company's technology division, who has worked at SP for 17 years.