Soft starters are bucking the trend

London - Not all business areas have been bowed by the current downturn, according to Stuart Harvey, managing director of Silverteam Ltd, which is currently UK distributor of Hitachi Drives, and Softstart UK Ltd, a Great Yarmouth-based designer and supplier of large soft starters. He reports some significant resilience in demand for certain drives technologies, driven mainly by rising energy costs.

In particular, Harvey has been surprised by the performance of the high power soft starter business. This, he said, is over budget, with a solid leads pipeline, especially for the company's new medium-voltage MV Digistart.

"Overall we're still ahead of target, although small inverter sales are slightly down by a single digit percentage. I'm led to believe, however, that the 'big boys' at the top of the pile are experiencing about a 20% downturn, so we're well-off by comparison," said Harvey. "Medium and large inverter drives for fans and pumps are holding up and as people experience the energy savings from an initial installation they're encouraged to go through the entire plant if they can get the investment capital, and that's holding up many enquiries at the moment."

Harvey picked out food & beverage as one of the best performing markets in the UK at present. "Even during a recession people have to eat, so our food and beverage end-users have remained buoyant, although our OEM suppliers to that sector are down a bit. Capital is being restrained, but maintenance is unavoidable to keep the plant running."

Meanwhile, Softstart UK has a 6.6kV MV Digistart soft starter unit currently under construction for an underground mine crusher and expects further new orders in applications where torque and current-related voltage-drop issues make controlled starting essential. Where once inverters might have been used mainly for their soft starting characteristics, cost issues are forcing the purchase of soft starters with bypass and reversing, said Harvey.

Meanwhile, the drives boss is sceptical about the role of regulatory drivers in the market. For example, he said: "The Enhanced Capital Allowance scheme was a waste of space frankly. The drives decision-makers were very confused about how to gain the benefit as this was all down to accountancy procedures, and there seems to have been little dialogue between engineering and finance departments, so the benefit was discounted at the point of sale.

"The application of inverter drives to existing fans and pumps across UK business would meet all the carbon reduction targets set to date. However, I've grown cynical that any government would seriously sponsor something so low-profile and difficult to explain to the electorate. It's politically better to put up hundreds of those ugly and inefficient wind turbines."

Looking ahead for the next 18 months, Harvey said: "We don't see any 'green shoots' in the small drives sector and our OEMs are still feeling it, but the leads pipeline for larger drives and soft starters is very encouraging. We'll be budgeting for growth next financial year."