After working in manufacturing for a short while Stephen Cadney moved North to do his B.Sc. degree in Engineering at U.M.I.S.T. (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) and his second, Masters degree, also in Engineering, at Salford University on the Teaching Company Scheme in collaboration with the General Electric Company. He was for some twenty five years a designer and builder of rollforming machine tools for high speed metal-forming, in addition to designing and manufacturing roll forming tooling since 1978 Immediately after completing his M.Sc. he successfully started and ran his own company. The company was sold in 2005.