Building on its expertise leads to firm’s expansion

10:20am Tuesday 16th March 2010

By Owen McAteer

A COMPANY that has built on its expertise to establish a diverse range of interests is looking to expand and take on more staff.

Lifting and Cooling Ltd, in Bowburn, near Durham City, started life working in road transport refrigeration containers.

The company, established in 1982 as Coolatronics, moved into lifting equipment after seeing the need for it at the tailgates of refrigerated vehicles.

It then used that knowledge to expand into markets such as wheelchair lifts for minibuses and three years ago changed its name to reflect these new markets.

It has also been able to apply its refrigeration experience to businesses and retail shops, giving it three areas of expertise.

It is now involved in road transport refrigeration and air conditioning, marine container refrigeration, cooling systems for food processing plants, bakeries and shops, commercial tail lifts and passenger lifts.

Now the company, which employs 15 people, is looking to take on four to six qualified engineers in the next year, as well as a graduate from Sunderland University.

Managing director Gordon Joice said: “We were originally just doing refrigeration and started getting into the mechanics with very big tail lifts.

“Mobility is a very important part of what we do because we work with a lot of councils.

“Anything that lifts people has to have a statutory thorough examination twice a year – it is like an MoT test, if you fail to do that you are infringing UK law.”

The different disciplines the company works in enables its engineers to offer more than one service to clients.

Mr Joice said: “A lot of the vehicles such as library buses have wheelchair lifts and air conditioning so the same engineer can service both.”

The company provides a 24- hour, rapid response engineering service, which can be particularly important for wheelchair users.

It also has links with local universities. It is presently involved in a project involving industrial cooling systems, in partnership with Teesside University.

Sunderland University is drawing up a shortlist of graduates, one of which will be offered a role with the firm.

The esteem in which the company, which has the sought-after TiVA accreditation, is held was shown when it was invited to a meeting of infrastructure services business Balfour Beatty’s top 200 suppliers.