Firms must stop blaming the strong pound for weaker profits and focus on improving productivity, one of Britain’s most respected industrialists has warned in the Daily Mail. John Neill, chairman and chief executive of Unipart Group, a non-executive director at Rolls-Royce said ‘I keep saying the strong pound is an excuse, we need to improve productivity. Neill created Unipart and developed the ‘Unipart Way’ to improve performance. The firm is now one of the UK’s largest employee-owned companies and operates in manufacturing, logistics and consulting.