Pressure maintained with strong prospects for sales

The Sheffield-based firm, which saw a 169 per cent increase in share price in 2013 making it Yorkshire’s best performing major stock, said the board is confident that the outcome for the current financial year will be at least in line with market forecasts.

The group said its performance has been underpinned by strong order books and pipelines of prospective orders across the group.

At the end of January, the total orders on hand were 39 per cent higher than at the start of the current financial year and 100 per cent higher than at the end of January 2013.

The group said that its principal market, oil and gas, has shown resilience and further progress has been made in the naval defence market and at Chesterfield BioGas.

Last month, the company won a £4.2m contract to build the UK’s largest biomethane-to-grid project in Scotland.

The firm said the project is the largest of any so far announced or currently operating in the UK.

Pressure Technologies said the deal will be central to a groundbreaking UK renewable energy project.

The company’s Chesterfield Biogas division will supply gas-scrubbing water-wash upgraders and other equipment to the site in Scotland, which will be the first facility of its kind north of the border when it is commissioned in late 2014.

Raw biogas, which will be derived from the anaerobic digestion of used-up grains from a distilling process, will be converted into biomethane suitable for use in the national gas grid.

As a result of the large amounts of raw biogas expected from the project, upgrading units will need to be coupled in parallel to produce an output of up to 5,000 cubic metres per hour of 98 per cent pure biomethane, the purity criteria required for natural gas piped into household and commercial premises.

The service elements of the contract include a three-year warranty, a guarantee of 98 per cent system availability and a monthly site visit by a Chesterfield Biogas engineer.

The firm said that its Greenlane water-wash process has proved its effectiveness over the last 20 years and requires no heat or chemicals, just water which can be recycled. It added that more then 75 sites are operating around the world.