THE invention and subsequent patenting of a revolutionary pulley block paved the way for 150 years of success for the family-owned Pickerings Group. It was on the back of this invention, by company founder Jonathan Pickering, that the company became a world leader in the manufacture of hoisting equipment, used across the British Empire, from Australia and New Zealand to India and Egypt.

The group has moved on since its days as a lift manufacturer, becoming a relatively diverse family of companies, employing more than 500 staff, but with its headquarters, employing 150, still based at the original 55,000sq ft site in Norton Road, Stockton.

It is from this base that the group manufactures about 500 lifts a year.

A network of offices across the UK and Europe employ a further 370 staff - the majority of them in Holland and Ireland.

The present chairman and managing director, Donald Fothergill, 42, is the fifth generation of the family to own and operate the group.

He believes the history of the company is important to today's business, with the knowledge and experience of its workforce a key to its continued success.

"When this company was founded, Dickens had just written A Christmas Carol and the Allied Armies were setting up camp in the Crimea," he said.

"There are very few of the older families in Stockton which haven't had at least one member employed here.

"Among our existing staff, there are people who have worked here for 43 years. In the past we have had members of staff who have been here for 50 years.

"And it is not just the odd one - the majority of our staff have been with the group for ten or 20 years. People tend to stay with us throughout their entire careers.

"I am sure it is that continuity of knowledge that is critical in providing added value to customers through continuity of skills and product knowledge."

Mr Fothergill could hold himself up as an example of staff loyalty.

Having read law at Oxford, he was about to embark on a legal career in the US when he was brought in to cover for the previous chairman's ill health.

He said: "I joined the business in 1985 to cover for sickness leave, and never left.

"I spent six years in the business learning it from the ground up. I did eventually get to the US, but it was with the Pickerings Group, learning about our operations there.

"I also spent some time in Switzerland, before returning to the UK to take responsibility for one of the divisions in 1988, becoming managing director in 1992."

But Mr Fothergill has no regrets about leaving his legal career behind, and is proud of what the Pickerings Group has achieved.

He said: "The company used to be just Pickerings Lifts, but the group has grown dramatically, particularly in the last five to seven years.

"Most of this growth has been based on our existing skills.

"We now have a servicing business in Bradford, known as Shorts Industries, which services our own lifts, but also those for other companies.

"While Pickerings Building Services provides a national maintenance service for dock levellers, industrial door systems, air conditioning plant and electrical products."

Pickerings Group is also behind one of the biggest names in Internet Security, Sapphire Technologies.

Mr Fothergill said: "The IT network business grew out of Pickerings own need for IT infrastructure.

"Back in the IT boom of the 1990s, we established Sapphire Technologies to service our own needs, but soon discovered that other engineering businesses needed similar IT solutions.

"Many of them preferred to use a company that had a knowledge of their sector, which put us in a strong position.

"Sapphire now looks after its own clients, but still continues to service the needs of the Pickerings Group at the same time.

"It currently provides IT security services to at least half the members of the Footsie 100 index of the Stock Market."

Although satisfied with the growth and success of Pickerings, Mr Fothergill still has ambitions for the group.

He said: "All the other companies like us have been bought by the opposition, but we do not intend to go the same way.

"One of the reasons we are still here is that we have built a reputation as the best, rather than the biggest, in our niche markets.

"We will continue to take long-term views of our investment strategies and continue to offer products and services that add value to our customers' businesses."

In war and peacetime, the work continued

PICKERINGS was among the first companies in the country to manufacture elevators, which were seen as a natural development from the general hoisting equipment the business supplied.

The group was the inventor of the self-sustaining hand lift and service lift, and developed the belt-power and hydraulic lift.

In 1888, the group designed and manufactured its first electric lift, which was installed in the Middlesbrough Co-operative Society.

The first fully-automatic push button lift was developed in 1896 and was the forerunner of many developments in the lift industry.

Today, the company is the leading lift designer and manufacturer in Britain, providing not only passenger lifts, but also industrial goods lifts for specialist applications in the petrochemical, automotive, food processing and paper/printing industries.

The company is also well known for its ships lifts, having installed them on passenger vessels such as the QEII, naval ships and bulk carriers, including the Atlantic Conveyor, which was sunk in the South Atlantic in 1982 during the Falklands War.

During the two world wars, the company carried out work of national importance, including the manufacture of balloon winches, trench mortars, and pontoon bridges.

It also installed the ammunition lifts for the long-range channel guns on the South Coast, near Dover.

Pickerings was also at the forefront of airship travel in the 1920s, providing lifts for inside mooring masts, used to take passengers on board.

It has also provided lifts for coal and gold mines, including the world's deepest, and has installed lifts inside gasometers to allow maintenance staff to move throughout the structures.

Food processing plants and supermarkets, including Safeway, are also among the company's clients, as are chemicals companies such as Huntsman Tioxide.

Other clients that Pickerings have carried out work for include David and Victoria Beckham, The Irish Taoiseach, architect Michael Gould and singer Charlotte Church.