Robson riding the carousel to St Helena

IT was presented as a gift to the hardiest members of the East India Company by Oliver Cromwell, and later served as Napoleon’s prison after his defeat at Waterloo.

The island of St Helena stands in splendid isolation in the south Atlantic, but it has an unexpected link with South Yorkshire.

Sheffield-based Geo Robson & Co (Conveyors) yesterday revealed that it had secured a contract to make a baggage reclaim carousel for St Helena’s tiny airport.

The carousel could probably fit into your living room.

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The company’s baggage carousels have been installed in major airports and seaports around the world, but normally on a grander scale.

Robson’s sales in the airport industry topped £5m in 2011.

The company has secured work with blue chip airport customers such as Heathrow, Manchester and Gatwick.

St Helena is only ten and a half miles long and six and a half miles wide.

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The island’s population of 4,200 relies on the airport for links with the outside world.

Ian Blanchard, Robson’s airport systems design engineer, said: “The St Helena carousel will sit half inside the terminal and half outside for the baggage handlers to load with the passenger luggage.”

The carousel will be transported to Cape Town in South Africa by cargo ship. From there, it will head out to the island on board RMS St Helena.

A trip to St Helena is not for the faint-hearted. It lies 703 miles from Ascension Island, which was a staging post during the Falklands War in 1982.

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It was uninhabited when the Portuguese discovered it in 1502.

Sir Francis Drake passed the island on his way back from sailing around the world, nearly 80 years later. Napoleon died on the island in 1821, after being imprisoned on St Helena following his defeat by Wellington.