The King’s Awards 2024
The Sarco team, proud winners of the King’s Award for Enterprise 2024 in the Innovation category.
Sarco Stopper Ltd
The team at Sarco Stopper explain what winning a King’s Award means to them and why product innovation is in the company’s DNA … The King’s Award provides recognition to our talented and committed team, who all continued to work and support each other and the business throughout the pandemic restrictions as a designated ‘Critical National Infrastructure Company; assisting the continuation of the safe supply of water and gas in the UK, in addition to their contributions over many years to our Hydro Bag® project and its ongoing development and diversification.
The success of the Aquastop and Hydrant Wizard Hydro Bag deployment systems would not have been possible without our key project collaborators, WASK (part of Crane BS&U), and their experienced technical and commercial teams, led by Andrew Welfare, Mike Dean and, formerly, Simon Throup, and their collective contribution to developing these systems. Yorkshire Water and its Esholt Hall testing and training facility was also important to the early years of development and trialling these new flow stopping and bypass systems on their distribution network. Sarco Stopper has developed long-standing and valued suppliers of materials and services, including lawyers, lindsay’s David Wood with contracts and accountants AAB and Stuart Rose.
They have all been key to establishing our global reputation for quality products and consistent levels of delivery and friendly service. The development of our quality and environmental systems, plus maintaining a Kitemark product quality licence since 2009, has been greatly enhanced by our close working relationship with BSI accreditation services.
Company history
Family directors Bill Menzies, John Menzies, Fiona Wilson and Barbara Menzies.
Sarco Stopper is a family owned and managed SME based in Broxburn, West Lothian, only five minutes from Edinburgh International Airport. The family directors represent fourth and fifth generations in manufacturing within the West Lothian and Edinburgh area – originally in knitting hosiery from 1887 and steel foundries from 1909, and now in light engineering using the latest advanced textiles, rubber and other components to greatly enhance product performance. This in turn is helping meet its diversity of applications for Hydro Bag and, most recently, our patented Stent® technologies.
Sarco Stopper was originally founded in 1996 as an inflatable stopper bag business, focused on the manufacture of flow stopping and bypass systems for distribution mains in gas, oil and other pipeline applications. Following a management buy-out in 2007, the company made a commitment to significant annual investment into our technical and design engineering activities, which had not previously been a focal point of the business.
The objective was to deliver growth and diversification of product applications, with particular focus on market opportunities within the water distribution sector, where leakage control and maintaining customer supply were becoming of increasing importance to water regulators, and their pressure on water supply companies to deliver nominated targets, or incur increasing large financial penalties.
As the company expanded, the need for larger and more modern production facilities, along with offices for the growing design department and associated administration, saw the company in 2012 acquire a much larger factory, while still retaining its close proximity existing facilities to accommodate the new Product Development, Testing and Training Centres. The support of Scottish Enterprise from their Account Managed Scheme between 2009 until it ended in 2020, and from West Lothian Business Gateway, assisted the company’s growth and general development.
Hydro Bag® technology
Sarco Wizards celebrate news of the company’s King’s Award success with Sa/tire infrastructure and Swan at the Oz Water Show.
The award for Innovation recognised the company’s development of Hydro Bag technology utilised in a range of flow stopping and bypass systems for water distribution networks. Key benefits allow leakage repairs, maintenance and asset creation under pressure, using mains pressure to inflate the Hydro Bag, while maintaining customer supply and meeting other water conservation objectives by minimising water loss. The systems have evolved considerably since first being launched in 2001 and are now used extensively in the UK and other countries. Bespoke design solutions have further expanded and diversified the applications benefitting from the technology.
There are now 25 in the Sarco team benefitting from modern and well-equipped facilities and layouts to suit our niche product design and manufacturing activities.
New leakage and burst response tools – SWW
In collaboration with long-standing partner WASK, and now supported by South West Water and the availability of their modern testing and training facilities in Exeter, a range of new leakage and burst repair systems are being developed.
Mini Mains Wizard at Oz Water Show
The first system completed, Mini Mains Wizard, is a miniaturised flow stopping and bypass system for up to 6″ dia mains. It is lighter and easier to use than the larger existing Aquastop equipment. Sarco water and gas systems over many years and it was decided to have the Wizard product launch at the Melbourne OzWater Show in May. This was the company’s first ever trade show presence out with Europe, so represents a significant milestone event and financial commitment. In support of our regional distributors, Swan lmport’s Simon Chau and Sven Funke, Bill and John Menzies, along with Sarco Finance Director Ian Stevenson, were all present. Building on the new Wizard product name and being in Oz, the theme of the stand was Sarco Wizards in Oz.
Medical stent technology transfer for Pipeline applications with SGN
Sarco Stopper secured exclusive rights to a medical inflatable stent patent for use in pipeline networks. The benefits of stent technology will allow leaks to be managed by deploying under pressure a stent with hollow centre, along with a camera into a gas or water distribution main. The stent would then be inflated to manage the leak, while allowing gas, water or other fluids to flow through the centre of the stent and avoiding depressurising the network, which could affect large geographic areas reuiring complex valve shuts and avoiding pipe technicians going into the leakage red zone. The Sarco Gas Stent® project has been developed with UK gas distribution company SGN and has recently been approved for use in their network areas, and will become available to other gas distributors in the UK and export markets later this year.
Product innovation is in the company’s DNA – renewable energy projects
The future for the company is positive, continuing its original objectives to develop, grow and diversify the business through new product innovation, and increased marketing of design and manufacturing capabilities. The renewable energy projects shown below utilised Hydro Bag Technology to deliver solutions that meet customer specific project requirements.
