Air of optimism at Spooner after business grows in milestone year

Ilkley-based Spooner Industries, a major employer in the area, bespoke designs and makes industrial process machinery such as ovens, dryers, coolers and air pollution control equipment for a variety of sectors including baking, steel, paper, environmental and converting – which encompasses packaging and labels.

The business has a turnover of £22m, double the figure it recorded five years ago and around 70 per cent of which is exported. “And we have strong expectations that growth will continue,” said director Steve Newell. “We are running at record order book levels.”

Over the same period the headcount has grown from 85 to 150. And the business is currently recruiting, with graduates being sought.

“We are exporting to some markets now that we didn’t export to in the past, so we are doing work in the Middle East, which we hadn’t done a lot of in the past, and quite a lot of work in South Africa and Zimbabwe while China and the Far East are significant export markets for us as well”, said Mr Newell.

The company does all its manufacturing at its Ilkley base, but has a sales and service site in North America as well as a sales site in China.

Although Spooner Industries supplies a range of markets, the core technology is the same, said Mr Newell. “We are moving air at particular temperatures and particular velocities to bake bread. We also have to move air about at similar temperatures and possibly slightly different speeds to cure paint that’s applied to steel.

“We also have to move air about, again at different temperatures and higher velocities, to dry coatings that are applied to paper. What we also do with paper and the converting side, in particular, is that we’re not just blowing air about to dry the coatings, we are also doing it to support the substrate, the paper or film, on a cushion of air – so it’s non-contact drying.”

Spooner Industries was originally called Spooner Dryer and Engineering Co, having been established in 1932 by William Wycliffe Spooner.

Initially producing industrial drying machines for the local textile industry, Spooner’s air flotation technology, which the late engineer patented, was soon also meeting the needs of the printing industry.

By the late 1940s this was extended to the baking industry – apparently after Mr Spooner had tested some bread in one of his dryers and concluded that it not only tasted better but had a longer shelf life.

In 1956, the expanding company moved to the old brewery site on Railway Road. Then in 2007 it transferred to new £4m purpose-built premises just down the road, where today it employs around 150 people.

Future expansion into new markets is continuing with research and development being carried out in the company’s UK test centre, based in Ilkley.

Mr Newell said: “We do a lot of new product development. One of the key drivers in our industry at the moment is energy efficiency. We do a lot of work on more energy efficient systems for our different markets, also improving throughput and then innovative ways of using our technology for drying other types of products.

He added: “If we go back to something our founder said many years ago, he talked about three keys to Spooner’s success: The first one is being thoroughly competent in our technology and innovative in how and where we apply it; the second one is delighting our customers; and the third one is recruiting good people, training them and developing them to do things well.

“And we think all those things are equally valid today.”

He added: “We’ve grown into new markets geographically and by market sector. Our strategy is to be a leading player in a range of markets, because we think that gives us more opportunities for growth and makes us more secure if there is a downturn in one of the markets.”

Asked how the UK can remain competitive in manufacturing, Mr Newell said: “I think the UK isn’t the cheapest part of the world, but if we continue to develop innovative technologies and continue to work hard on being efficient and productive, there’s a good future for us.”

He declined to give exact figures in relation to profit, but did say: “Our profitability is reasonable and we have a strong balance sheet.”

Spooner Industries is owned by parent company Aegeus Industries. Chairman of Spooner Industries Dr Richard Summers is the main shareholder of Aegeus Industries.

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