A Brighouse business laying claim to be the biggest fan manufacturer in England is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Halifax Fan Company, which hit the £10m turnover figure during 2013, has grown to become a global force in fan engineering.
The firm, based at Brookfoot Business Park, puts its success down to continuous investment in the business and in its people. Over the last 50 years, the company has accumulated an enormous depth of skill within its long serving personnel.
One of the company’s engineers, chief draftsman Steve Thomas, will clock-up 40 years of service this year – as will three others during the next five years.
Halifax’s 50 years of experience has been put at the customer’s fingertips with a new fan configuration tool on the company’s website – making the firm’s design knowledge and making it available on a simple “tick-box” format for any engineer anywhere in the world to use. The company has also invested heavily in tooling, in computerisation and in software tools for design and analysis.
The biggest investment has come with the building of a new factory in China to take the firm’s business to the world’s busiest marketplace. The factory now employs more than 70 personnel – many UK-trained – and occupies more than 5,000 sq metres.
Offices staffed by trained engineers, who provide a consultancy service on the company’s products, have been opened in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Bangkok.
Company managing director Malcolm Staff said: “There’s an old saying that when the going gets tough, the tough gets going.
“We had to take our expertise to where there was a strong market for it and that has paid real dividends.
“We sell fans of quality, reliability and efficiency and that’s exactly what the South East Asian market wants.
“They have a real focus on life-cost rather than first-cost and we provide fans that operate efficiently and don’t break down, so lifetime costs are greatly reduced.”
From making simple fans for the textile industry, the company now manufactures fans small and large for the widest possible spectrum of industries and specialises in high safety ATEX certified fans for the likes of the petrochemical industry.
Halifax engineers helped write the European Union regulations on ATEX fans and are now involved in formulating the EU directive on fan efficiency.
Mr Staff said the growth of China’s and South East Asia’s industrial infrastructure offered great opportunities.
The new office in Shanghai would support some of the world’s most prominent engineering concerns and consultancies, many of whom had located regional offices to Shanghai to service the expanding market.
“Manufacturing in China has given us a great edge,” said Mr Staff. “Potential customers can visit the factory easily, delivery is quicker and cheaper and our competitiveness is enhanced by buying materials and manufacturing locally.
“Brighouse is still the company’s design and development stronghold, but cloud computing means the UK and Chinese factories are no farther apart than the nearest computer keyboard.”
