Owain Davies, the managing director of Burry Port engineering firm Amcanu, has died in a plane crash in the Swiss Alps. He was 55.
Mr Davies was a passenger in a light aircraft that hit a mountainside near the resort of Leukerbad on Tuesday afternoon. All three people on board were killed.
Amcanu said he had been travelling “alongside two of his closest friends”.
In a statement released through the company, his son Aron said the family had “suffered an unimaginable loss”.
“He was my mentor throughout my life, personally and in business, and I know many people at Amcanu will feel that they have lost a mentor too,” he said.
“I am immensely proud of everything he achieved, but I am even prouder to have had him as my father.”
‘No such things as problems, only opportunities’
Amcanu was started in Burry Port in 1975 by Mr Davies’s father, Spencer Davies OBE. Owain grew up around the business and took over its leadership in 2000.
Under him it moved from general fabrication to one specialism: designing and building the steel enclosures that house industrial pumps, generators and battery storage systems, with every stage of the work done at the Burry Port factory.
In a tribute on its website, the company called him “a familiar face on the factory floor, an unstoppable force, a mentor and, for many people who have spent a significant part of their working lives at Amcanu… a very good friend”.
It said he believed nothing was impossible, and had a saying for it: “There are no such things as problems… only opportunities.”
He believed in apprenticeships, the company said, and in giving young people the chance to build a career without leaving the town they grew up in.
He leaves his wife Michelle, his children Aron and Ffion, who both work in the business, his father Spencer, and his grandchildren Oakley and Albie.
The company described one of his last conversations with his son. Mr Davies was away on a flying trip, and Aron was back in Burry Port, sitting at his father’s desk and running the business in his absence.
“Owain expressed a great deal of confidence in him,” it said, “a moment that now carries extraordinary significance.”
Lifeboat helmsman, air ambulance trustee, pilot
Earlier in his life Mr Davies served for nearly 25 years as a helmsman with Burry Port’s lifeboat, the company said. He had been a trustee of the Wales Air Ambulance charity since 2017.
Dr Kyle Jacques, the charity’s chair of trustees, told the BBC he was “a valued colleague and friend, whose loyalty and generosity of spirit meant so much to us”.
Flying was the side of him that not everyone saw. Amcanu said he was an experienced pilot who flew his own helicopter whenever he could, but “didn’t make a great show of it”.
Swansea Airport said he was “a good friend” and a member of the alliance of aviators that runs the airfield at Fairwood Common. “It was with shock and great sadness that we learned on Wednesday that Owain Davies… had tragically lost his life,” it said.
“The circumstances of his death are devastating,” the company’s tribute said, “but flying was something that brought Owain enormous happiness throughout his life.”
What is known about the crash near Leukerbad
Police in the Swiss canton of Valais say the aircraft, a single-engine Cirrus SR22T, had flown from Lugano and stopped at Sion before setting off for Buochs in central Switzerland.
Shortly after 4pm local time on Tuesday it struck the northern slope of a mountain in the Fluhalp area above Leukerbad, for reasons that are not yet known. People nearby reported smoke, and rescue crews who reached the site with three helicopters could only confirm that all three on board had died.
Formal identification is continuing and the other two victims have not been named. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it was “providing support to the families of two British nationals who died in Switzerland”.
The Swiss safety investigation authority is examining the cause. Prosecutors and Valais police are running a parallel inquiry, as is standard after a fatal air accident in Switzerland.
‘Extraordinarily well prepared’: what it means for Amcanu
The company has moved to reassure customers, suppliers and its workforce. It says current orders and commitments are secure, the Davies family remain closely involved, and plans for the firm’s next stage had already been agreed with Mr Davies and will continue.
“He was a husband, a dad, a grandad, a son, a mentor, a leader and a friend,” its tribute ends. “And he will be missed more than we can possibly express.”
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