We’ve recently expanded our production capacity by moving to a new larger facility in Grimsby as we prepare to step up the manufacture of our new range of dry break couplings.
The production facility at Grimsby Enterprise Village will replace ourprevious plant in Scunthorpe, giving more space for stock and parts ahead of the launch of the new fluid transfer couplings, which aim to drive safety and sustainability in the oil, gas and chemical sectors.
Development of the new devices has been supported by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, which awarded Smartflow £173K of funding last year followed by a share of a £90m package to protect current innovation projects from the impact of Covid-19.
The funding was awarded towards the cost of industrial testing and analysis of the couplings at the National Engineering Laboratory and wear testing at the National Physics Laboratory.
The new sizes performed extremely well during testing and we are now stepping up production as we prepare for export to our global distributors during 2021.
Despite having to cancel international meetings with potential clients during 2020 because of the pandemic, we have continued to develop sales channels by video.
Covid delayed the testing programme but we have had keen interest from around the world for a wide range of applications, such as on oil platforms and in chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing, where it is critical to eliminate fluid leaks during transfer.
The Grimsby site is now fully operational in preparation for global export with a large number of unbuilt couplings being set aside to be adapted quickly to customer specifications for reduced lead times.
Our dry break couplings have been developed in different sizes and materials, including carbon steel and titanium, and now have all the testing data we need to take them to a worldwide market.