Deritend Group, which looks after the repair and replacement of electric motors, pumps, gearboxes, electronic controls and induction equipment, is 121 years-old in 2019 and has marked the big anniversary with a string of new contracts with clients involved in utilities, food processing and the automotive sector.
The Wolverhampton-headquartered company has come a long way since it started out as a small electrical maintenance business in London in 1898, primarily repairing street lighting in and around the capital.
Today, it employs 110 people across four locations in the Black Country, Luton and Middlesbrough and, thanks to the clutch of recent wins, is on course to post £11m annual sales.
“121 years in business is a fantastic achievement, especially considering all of the different economic changes and some really bad recessions,” explained Richard Hale, Managing Director of Deritend Group.
“We have acquired companies, we have sold firms and we have moved sites on numerous occasions – throughout all of this we have always stayed true to our founding principles of being small enough to care, but large enough to cope.”
He continued: “This approach, combined with investment in modern facilities and our people, means we are able to offer our customer a proactive repair and maintenance service for their critical assets, helping them minimise the downtime, decrease the costs and maximise the productivity of equipment.”
Deritend, which was acquired by Richard and his management team in 2001, plays a critical role in ensuring we have clean water in our homes, production lines meet just-in-time requirements and society has a regular supply of food.
A fully equipped fabrication operation in Middlesbrough and a skilled team of engineers located strategically across the UK continue to support customers ranging from Severn Trent/Thames Water and JCB to British Steel and Mondelez International, who own Cadbury.
Over £750,000 has been invested in new equipment, recruitment and upskilling its workforce over the last twelve months, with plans in place to relocate its Wolverhampton site to West Bromwich by the start of 2021.
“Many people will never know their lives have been touched by Deritend or our engineers,” added Dave Booth, Regional Director.
“Just last year we fixed an electric motor that was powering a pump delivering clean water to over 4000 homes. Without our speed of response and technical know-how, those residents could have well been out of water for some time.
“Our staff have been fantastic and a key part of the journey we have been on, with some of them working with us for over 45 years. We wanted to do something to celebrate the 121st birthday and have organised a series of celebrations at our four locations, where every employee will receive a gift as a memento of our anniversary and a ‘thank you’ from the management team.”
He concluded: “We are continuing to grow so there has to be a focus on ensuring we have the rich engineering skills to move forward and this will involve recruiting experienced engineers and embarking on a new Apprenticeship programme that has already seen us take on four apprentices.
“Make UK are helping us shape the delivery of the training and we have committed significant investment into ensuring this is a focal point of our recruitment activity going forward.”
