Allenwest Wallacetown - Scottish development international

Allenwest Wallacetown make flameproof switchgear for the mining, oil and gas and petro - chemical industries. We work with our customers from the initial concept through design, through manufacture to the finished product. We then support the product in the field to gain life cycle value. Allen West has been operating in Ayrshire for something like 80 plus years. As you know Scotland is synonymous with engineering so we’ve been fortunate to be able to pull on that engineering resource and expertise and tradition. Global markets are essential for this company. We have a limited UK market so we have to survive if we want growth to be part of the growth overseas. China in particular is the biggest growth market for coal mine extraction anywhere in the world and we’ve chosen a number of different ways to participate in that Marketplace. One being a joint venture partnership, one being having established customers who we have a very strong relationship with so we can if you like, be part of their growth because they are buying components from us to put into their products. Innovations to any company are very much key to their success for the future. Some two and a half years ago we embarked on a project with Strathclyde University to develop variable speed drives for use in underground coal mines and I’m pleased to say that we’ve got our first VSD ready to go to UK coal for its field trials which will take about six months and we can then market that world wide as a standard product. With SDI and Scottish Enterprise and to some extent our local business development team here in Ayrshire. They have assisted us both on IT projects, updating skills projects, advertising, marketing and overseas exhibition costs and that has been a great help to the company and I hope that continues going forward.