Sarco Stopper Ltd
Company history Sarco Stopper is a family owned and managed SME based in Broxburn, West Lothian, only five minutes from Edinburgh International Airport. The family directors represent fourth and fifth generations in manufacturing within the West Lothian and Edinburgh area – originally in knitting hosiery from 1887 and steel foundries from 1909, and now in light engineering using the latest advanced textiles, rubber and other components to greatly enhance product performance. This in turn is helping meet its diversity of applications for Hydro Bag and, most recently, our patented Stent ® technologies. Sarco Stopper was originally founded in 1996 as an inflatable stopper bag business, focused on the manufacture of flow stopping and bypass systems for distribution mains in gas, oil and other pipeline applications. Following a management buy-out in 2007, the company made a commitment to significant annual investment into our technical and design engineering activities, which had not previously been a focal point of the business. The objective was to deliver growth and diversification of product applications, with particular focus on market opportunities within the water distribution sector, where leakage control and maintaining customer supply were becoming of increasing importance to water regulators, and their pressure on water supply companies to deliver nominated targets, or incur increasing large financial penalties. As the company expanded, the need for larger and more modern production facilities, along with offices for the growing design department and associated administration, saw the company in 2012 acquire a much larger factory, while still retaining its close proximity existing facilities to accommodate the new Product Development, Testing and Training Centres. The support of Scottish Enterprise from their Account Managed Scheme between 2009 until it ended in 2020, and from West Lothian Business Gateway, assisted the company’s growth and general development.
The Sarco team, proud winners of the King’s Award for Enterprise 2024 in the Innovation category.
The team at Sarco Stopper explain what winning a King’s Award means to them and why product innovation is in the company’s DNA… The King’s Award provides recognition to our talented and committed team, who all continued to work and support each other and the business throughout the pandemic restrictions as a designated ‘Critical National Infrastructure Company’, assisting the continuation of the safe supply of water and gas in the UK, in addition to their contributions over many years to our Hydro Bag® project and its ongoing development and diversification. The success of the Aquastop and Hydrant Wizard Hydro Bag deployment systems would not have been possible without our key project collaborators, WASK (part of Crane BS&U), and their experienced technical and commercial teams, led by Andrew Welfare, Mike Dean and, formerly, Simon Throup, and their collective contribution to developing these systems. Yorkshire Water and its Esholt Hall testing and training facility was also important to the early years of development and trialling these new flow stopping and bypass systems on their distribution network. Sarco Stopper has developed long-standing and valued suppliers of materials and services, including lawyers, lindsay’s David Wood with contracts and accountants AAB and Stuart Rose.
They have all been key to establishing our global reputation for quality products and consistent levels of delivery and friendly service. The development of our quality and environmental systems, plus maintaining a Kitemark product quality licence since 2009, has been greatly enhanced by our close working relationship with BSI accreditation services.
Hydro Bag ® technology The award for Innovation recognised the company’s development of Hydro Bag technology utilised in a range of flow stopping and bypass systems for water distribution networks. Key benefits allow leakage repairs, maintenance and asset creation under pressure, using mains pressure to inflate the Hydro Bag, while maintaining customer supply and meeting other water conservation objectives by minimising water loss. The systems have evolved considerably since first being launched in 2001 and are now used extensively in the UK and other countries. Bespoke design solutions have further expanded and diversified the applications benefitting from the technology.
Family directors Bill Menzies, John Menzies, Fiona Wilson and Barbara Menzies.
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