Seaside specialism

There are certain industries that you associate with British seaside towns. Walking through sleepy Shoreham, near Brighton, it's no surprise to see chandlers and boat-builders, or even the small garage specialising in custom Harley Davidsons. What's unexpected is the presence of a firm specialising in calibration of complex pumps and meters. Yet Young Calibration has been thriving since 1996, and managing director Adrian Young expects business to continue growing over the next few years.

Young's roots are in the automotive industry, and this sector provided all of Young Calibration's business in the early years of the company. But for the past two years, Young has seen the trend for cost-cutting and outsourcing in the process sector offer new opportunities for his business. In-house calibration is increasingly becoming a thing of the past, he says, with companies preferring to go to specialists on the occasions when they need to re-calibrate their instruments.

Young runs a small operation, occupying two industrial units and employing only seven people. The focus of the operation is calibrating flow, temperature and pressure measurement devices. Gas flows are provided by turbines and rotary pumps, certified to traceable sources in the UK and Germany. The pipework for two fixed flow-rigs occupy one wall. One is restricted to running on water; the other, an oil rig, is more versatile.

'This is a major part of our business,' Young explains. 'In many cases, calibration is done under set conditions, but the instruments are used under different conditions - for example, meters that measure oil flows will be calibrated on water. We make a point of calibrating as close to the actual service conditions as possible.'

It's the oil rig which runs the versatile tests. 'We'll sometimes ask the client for a sample of their process fluid, or in some cases we'll buy small volumes in ourselves,' Young says. 'We've run all different types and viscosities of oil, various alcohols, even inks.'

Another important part of the business is building custom flow calibration rigs. 'They're totally bespoke for the clients,' Young says. 'It's a major undertaking, and we can only have one rig on build at a time, maybe four projects a year.'

Several of these rigs have been built for Young's traditional clients in the automotive sector, with companies such as Ford and Mercedes using them to calibrate oil and fuel pumps. BP and Shell have also been customers, Young says, while the rig currently under construction is destined for the R&D department of a pump manufacturer which is developing specialised high-speed pumps.

Since 2002, Young estimates that the proportion of business coming from the automotive sector has dropped from 100% to 60%, with the remainder coming from the pharmaceutical, food industry and other sectors. Within the next two years, however, he plans to reduce the automotive down to 30%, with a new emphasis on a growing part of the operation - mobile calibration.

The mobile business as an offshoot of the custom rigs business.

'We built a rig for one client, including Coriolis and magflow calibration, but in the end, the client didn't buy it,' Young says. 'So now, we send that rig out on hire.' It's because of this that Young is now finding a new business area opening up, with clients in the pharma, biosciences and food sectors.

Companies operating under strict hygiene guidelines find it difficult to schedule calibration. It's vital for the operation of their plants and for regulatory compliance, but in general, the only time it can be fitted in is while the plants are taken off-line and are being cleaned. Often, Young says, the best option for these companies is to bring in a mobile calibration unit to test the measurement instrumentation on the plant.

'The way it works varies from sector to sector,' Young says. 'For the bio-products sector, these shutdowns are planned well in advance, so we have ahead bookings. In other sectors, we can go in at the weekend, in the evening, or during shutdowns. Some companies prefer us to provide operators to work the equipment, sometimes we'll just provide some training and leave them to get on with it for a day, or two days, or however long they need.'

The advantage of the on-site calibration side is that it's more cost-effective for Young, and often more effective for the client.

'In the past, if there was a problem in the calibration, you'd look at the equipment - the meters themselves, or the transducers. If you're on-site, you can look at the whole process, and if necessary go through it piece by piece until you find the problem,' he says. Moreover, customers seem to be happy to outsource on-site calibration.

The next stage for Young is to fully kit out a mobile unit in a van. 'We'll build a water rig, and mobilise fuel and any-fluid rigs,' he says. 'We'll also need to have a steam-cleaned hygienic rig. Then we can supply training courses, or just drive the rig to the clients and run it ourselves.' Then, the only limit to Young Calibration will be the vagaries of the motorway network.

<b>On-site in Ireland</b>

Young Calibration is tapping a developing market in the UK, but over the Irish Sea, on-site calibration is an established trend. Flowmeter Systems, a calibration specialist based in Mallow, Cork, has recently completed a major on-site project at a biopharmaceutical complex in the cluster of pharma plants around Cork.

The company ordered 11 flowmeter calibration tigs to comply with validation requirements for its liquid and gas flow measurement facilities. All using Micro Motion Coriolis mass flow meters from Emerson Process Management, the flow rigs are accredited by competent laboratories, including Flowmeter Systems itself and other flow laboratories in Europe.

The rigs include what Flowmeter Systems believe to be the only dual fluid calibration rig in Ireland, accredited for both liquid and gas flows on a single sensor.