Pump distributor and manufacturer Tomlinson Hall & Co Ltd is on a high after winning a prestigious regional award.
The Billingham, UK-based firm picked up the Small Business trophy in the final of the North East Business Awards, which took place on April 23 at Hardwick Hall in County Durham.
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This success follows Tomlinson Hall’s triumph in the Teesside Business Awards in March, where it won the Small Business award: the company then battled it out with the winners of the Tyneside and Northumberland and Durham and Wearside Business Awards to take first place in the main regional final.
Organised by Newcastle-based newspaper The Journal and its sister paper on Teesside, The Gazette, the annual competition is held in association with the North East Chamber of Commerce. More than 550 business people from across the North of England and beyond attended April’s showpiece final.
Tomlinson Hall is an approved global distributor for major industrial pump brands, including DEPA and ELRO, and manufactures its own pump, Liquivac – an innovative liquid ring vacuum pump which can handle combinations of liquids, gases and fine solids and can perform a huge range of operations.
The firm, which has operated since 1919 and is a co-founder of the Pump Distributors Association, has seen highly impressive sales growth in the last three years. It has grown sales for global pump manufacturer CRANE ChemPharma Flow Solutions – manufacturers of DEPA and ELRO pumps – year and year and last year recorded its best annual sales results for Crane since its appointment by the company in 2006.
Its sales performance, commitment to staff development, close ties to the local community and a recent re-launch of Liquivac – plus a subsequent export push for the product – all contributed to the firm being honoured with the Small Business of the Year title. The Small Business Award was sponsored by Sunderland University.
The firm recently launched the Liquivac pump in the United Arab Emirates and wider Middle East, where it has huge potential for use in many applications. Its characteristics – including its abilities to transfer liquids and combinations of liquids, gases and fine solids, and to operate with long suction lines – mean that it is ideal for use in sectors including seawater extraction and the petrochemical industry.
Colin Simpson, business development director of Tomlinson Hall & Co Ltd, said: “To receive the Small Business award for Teesside was a great honour, and then to triumph in the overall North East final topped off a fantastic first four months of 2015 for Tomlinson Hall.
“This success is down to the hard work of all our staff and is a major achievement for a company with strong roots in North East England.
“Companies from a wide range of sectors competed in the awards so it’s very pleasing that through Tomlinson Hall, the pump industry was recognised in such a high profile event.”
Commenting on Tomlinson Hall’s success, Rob Worrall, principle lecturer for Employer Engagement at the Faculty of Business and Law at Sunderland University and a member of the Small Business Award judging panel, said: “It was clear that this was a business which has a real passion for what it does. People really seem to love working there and it has an excellent reputation for effective and responsive customer service.”
Granville Kelly, branch manager at Handelsbanken and also a member of the judging panel, added: “Despite very strong competition this year, Tomlinson Hall were worthy winners. Their outstanding contribution to industry, combined with a customer focus supported by people that hold honesty and integrity as guiding values when dealing with their customers was clearly evident throughout the team.”
Tomlinson Hall has garnered a string of awards this year, with its recent successes following the company’s triumph in the North East Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC) Annual Awards, held in January, where it was named SME of the Year. The NEPIC awards recognise outstanding achievement in the process sector, with NEPIC – the first cluster in the UK to receive the Gold Label for Cluster Management Excellence – boasting hundreds of member companies from across a wide range of industries.
The company has won the UK Pump Distributor of the Year Award four times at British Pump Industry Awards, most recently in April 2014.
For more information visit www.tomlinson-hall.co.uk and www.liquivac.co.uk
