MOVING WATER
Your business was founded in 2017, although you have thirty years’ experience in this field. How difficult was it to strike out on your own? Getting the company up and running was challenging for the first eighteen months as there are high barriers to entry. Customers in our markets are very conservative and that means going through extensive processes like pre-qualification and registration on supply chains of the largest companies like aggregate companies or an oil company. We knew we could design and manufacture market-leading products and we are all passionate about what we do, but passion doesn’t overcome reluctance or fear of change in business and that is a major challenge in this country.
What were the main challenges that you faced and how did you overcome then in the early days of business? The main challenges in the early days were all connected to cashflow, but that’s the same for any company if you don’t raise capital. We were fortunate in that we sold my previous company in which I was a shareholder and I reinvested in starting our own pump manufacturing business with my colleague with whom I had worked for the last fifteen years, and who is still on board as our Ops Manager. Getting suppliers and customers on board was a challenge but we had some fantastic support from privately owned suppliers whose management understood and bought into our vision. It was the large, often publicly owned companies that run their businesses based on credit ratings agency reports that were the most challenging. Having said that our two key suppliers, both publicly owned gave us over a £100,000 of open credit in our second year which helped us move the business forward. Getting rest and sleep is a major challenge in the early days. Not only do you work 12-14 hours a day, when you come home, you are worrying about cashflow, VAT returns and designing equipment that people want. Having been Managing Director of a previous company, I knew what the challenges were and about time management, but its extraordinary how these challenges seem larger when you are tired every day! We won a contract for almost a million pounds in 2018 from one of the world’s largest mining companies in Africa, but had to work from 6am to 9pm most days, six days a week for four months to complete the project. After we finished and shipped it, it took us a week to recover both in terms of energy and enthusiasm.
Unusually for a business operating in heavy industry, the equipment you use is environmentally friendly. Can you explain more about that? To differentiate ourselves from other European manufacturers we have to constantly innovate products that surpass the market needs or wants. We are not the least expensive option in the market, but we do offer a premium quality product with a long warranty. The major environmental push at the moment is for battery powered equipment and that’s fine, but it comes with hidden environmental costs (like mining the battery ores) offshore. We looked at the market and decided we needed to be the company offering the cleanest possible pumps in terms of a “global environmental footprint” and we decided on Stage5 diesel engines from Germany and Sweden. Combining these engines with the most efficient pump designs from America, we have designed pumpsets that move the most amount of water per hour using the least amount of fuel and generating the smallest amount of pollution and that’s why cities in countries like Sweden and Denmark now demand our equipment. However, it’s not just about the environment these new pumps, run slower, have less wear and use less oil and fuel so running costs are much lower improving the profits of their owners as well.
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