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13 February 2008
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Local hero
Deep in the Norfolk countryside, Nick Folliard is keeping engineering alive by finding new markets for his expertise in hydraulics.
Ben Hargreaves
meets him
The words “Norfolk” and “engineering” are not often mentioned in the same breath. The East Anglian county is notable for its farming, laidback rural lifestyles and a thriving tourism industry, with the Broads providing an idyllic setting for stressed city slickers looking to get away from it all by messing about on the river.
Taking a punt on running an engineering business in this bucolic setting, without the security of a traditional industrial heritage, an abundance of customers in the area and a big, localised supply chain, might seem unwise. And Nick Folliard, managing director of Folliard Hydraulics, a small manufacturing firm based just outside Norwich, has certainly seen some companies fall by the wayside during his 35 years at the helm. “The big engineering companies in Norfolk have all gone,” he reflects.
But his own firm has survived, and, although it has had to evolve to face up to new challenges, Folliard Hydraulics is enjoying a period of prosperity, bearing out the rosy recent state-of-the-industry addresses from the manufacturers’ organisation the EEF. “Last year was a good one for us,” Folliard confirms, “and orders are up for this year too – we’re busy.”
Folliard runs his business from a small machine shop and office complex located in the countryside, by the village of Spooner Row. The village has a dinky little railway station, but enquiring at Norwich’s main terminus, a 20-minute journey away, about the service to it tends to reinforce the sense of out-of-the-wayness: there’s a four-hour wait for the next train. The company may be a hive of activity, but its environs are tranquil.
Folliard has 12 staff, divided more or less evenly between production and sales and admin roles, and he carries out much of the detailed design work himself, using AutoCAD. He also has an apprentice, a reflection of the value he places on his own apprenticeship in the RAF, in which he specialised in airframe engineering. “I had one,” he says, “so I’m willing to do the same for the younger generation. We take people on, train them, and hope they will stay for 10-15 years. I’ve always offered apprenticeships.”
All the workers he employs need to be multi-skilled, he points out, able to machine parts, and wire and assemble the hydraulic systems the company designs and makes. “That’s the only way we can operate,” he says. External designers, engineers and shopfloor workers are sometimes brought in if overtime by staff can’t get a project out of the door quickly enough.
Folliard’s clients are drawn from a diverse range of sectors, including motorsport, where the company has had considerable success supplying hydraulics for Formula One test rigs – “we’re supplying about half the grid” – and the offshore industry, in subsea applications. The firm also acts as an authorised “re-certifier” of hydraulic accumulators from Deeside-based Fawcett Christie Hydraulics.
A newer project is found in the workshop. A Ford Transit van in the livery of EDF Energy is being fitted with bespoke hydraulic equipment to help maintain electricity substation transformers. The kit is designed to purify and dry out transformer oil contaminated with water, which needs to be serviced every five years or so.
The oil is pumped out and cleaned up in drums. A so-called “crackle test” is used to determine whether the oil is sufficiently pure – an increase in resistance indicates this when a current is passed through the oil – and can be returned to the transformer.
The EDF job is a mark of the firm’s diversity, Folliard suggests. “There’s really no typical job here,” he suggests. “If hydraulics is involved, we’re interested.”
Hydraulics, says Folliard, is still the technology of choice in many applications because of the power density it provides, despite advances in electric systems. “Hydraulics still has applications where it’s the only sensible choice. A small hydraulics package will give you high power densities. And they are good for dirty environments, or where there are extremes of heat and cold.
“But, having said that, electrics are creeping up there, and there’s electrics in everything we send out. You can’t just be in mechanical engineering any more – we have to look at anything and everything.”
Part of the reason the company has survived as long as it has, Folliard says, is because of a willingness to seek out business in previously unthought-of markets and sectors. “We have had to spread the net very wide,” he says. “It’s perhaps true that the hardest part is finding out about the new industries and talking to them.” Having new high-tech industries developing in places such as nearby Cambridge helps, he adds.
Past retirement age, Folliard, the company’s sole owner, is full of enthusiasm as he flicks through a series of designs for the Renault F1 team on his computer. Soon more decisions will have to be made about the future of the business. But for the present it is alive and kicking, proving that smart engineering can flourish – even in the unlikeliest of places.
© PE Publishing, 13 February 2008
