The Yorkshire firm stopping killers in their tracks

Barriers to entry: The heightened international security system has put Hornsea-based Heald's products on the front line in the defence against terrorism. Managing director Debbie Heald spoke to John Grainger.
Product design and development chief Rod Heald perched on an HT1-
Commander road blocker.Product design and development chief Rod Heald perched on an HT1-
Commander road blocker.
Product design and development chief Rod Heald perched on an HT1- Commander road blocker.

There are probably plenty of things that cause terrorists headaches – from cash-flow problems to sourcing hardware – but the products of one Yorkshire manufacturer must surely rank among them. After all, just how would you go about trying to get past a security barrier that can stop a 30-tonne truck speeding at 50mph in its tracks?

The HT1-Commander road blocker looks rather like one of those yellow and black ramp-shaped wedges that pop up at the entrances to multi-storey car parks, only bigger.

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Its maker, Heald Ltd, believes it to be the only security barrier in the world to have passed the 30-tonne test – an achievement all the more remarkable if you watch the crash-test footage. It shows the lorry cab being completely annihilated – in slow motion – while the road blocker sits completely motionless. It answers the age-old question of which side wins when an apparently unstoppable force meets an immovable object.

More impressive still, when the wreckage is all cleared away, the barrier still works, sliding back into the “down” position, and up again, on command.

“It’s really important that you see the barrier still working at the end of the video,” says managing director Debbie Heald. “It’s been designed and proven to work after impact, so it protects against secondary attack – which is vital, because if your barrier’s lost, you’re unprotected.”

Heald, which employs 40 people at its factory on the Yorkshire coast, designs, manufactures and installs a range of what are known in the business as hostile vehicle mitigation (HVM) systems, and has a number of worldwide patents. The purpose of its barriers and road blockers is to prevent targeted attacks on high-profile sites around the world.

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“This is one of the difficulties – we can’t talk about a lot of our clients,” says Ms Heald. “But we’ve got our products in some really nice places, such as the UN building in New York.”

Other sites include palaces, embassies, border controls, oil refineries, banks and government buildings. Glasgow International Airport installed Heald’s devices after the unsuccessful car-bomb attack in 2007. Another Heald system is believed to have foiled an attack on a military site in Germany.

In fact, ever since the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the market for this kind of product has grown and industry observers refer to it as “buoyant”.

“There’s definitely been an upturn for HVM equipment,” says Ms Heald. “Our business is growing rapidly at the moment, and we’re getting lots of business from the US, Singapore, Australia, Russia, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, all across Europe, and the UK is on the up too. We’re always looking to break into new markets. We’re looking specifically at the moment at new European markets. We have coverage or representation in Holland, Norway, Sweden, and we’re looking at potentially France, Turkey, and maybe Germany.

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“The majority of our sales are exports, but where they used to account for 65-70 per cent of sales, now they account for 60-65 per cent. And that’s not because export sales have gone down – on the contrary – but because UK sales have increased.”

This may well be in part due to the changing nature of the security threat. The co-ordinated strikes seen in Madrid in 2004, London (2005), Mumbai (2008) and Nairobi (2013), among others, appear to have been replaced – or at least supplemented – by less complex, but still deadly, attacks by lone individuals, often using nothing more sophisticated than a lorry. Nice, Berlin, London, Stockholm and, recently, Barcelona have all been hit, and while not all of these attacks could have been prevented by barriers, some could certainly have been at least mitigated, saving lives.

The reaction of the security industry has been to innovate, and Heald’s R&D wing, led by Debbie’s husband, Rod, has been busy.

Ms Heald says her company is working on “a few confidential things we can’t talk about”, but adds: “We’ve been pushing innovation in shallow and surface-mount products in recent years. We’re also looking at temporary events management for festivals, where you might not be able to excavate. That’s where something like the Matador, which is a bolt-down solution that’s hooked up to a generator or operated manually, might be used.

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“We’re always developing something. We’re looking at an electromechanical [EM] version as an alternative to our hydraulic system, to reduce the power requirement and hence the need for cable ducting.

“The electromechanical market is not that huge; there aren’t many suppliers of crash-tested HVM EM systems. We hope to unveil something which combines EM with access control in the next six months – watch this space!”

But the innovation is not confined to the physical; the circuitry is equally important.

“We’ve just developed new LED technology that works off an induction charging system, so it charges up every time the system operates. We manufacture everything here, including the electronics, so we’re very self-sufficient,” she says.

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“We’re also working on electronic solutions so we can avoid off-the-shelf circuitry that could potentially be manipulated. The aim is to provide the highest level of security in our electronics, so that it matches up to the security provided by the physical barrier.”

The challenge of adapting to the evolving terror threat may subside one day, but for the time being the necessity is very real. Europol executive director Rob Wainwright recently reported that there were 142 failed, foiled or completed terrorist attacks last year in eight European states, more than half of them in the UK.

What’s more, industry experts, including Europol, agree that the threat could well become more acute as jihadist fighters find their way back to Britain following the collapse of the so-called Islamic State.

That the security industry should do well out of such a situation is perhaps inevitable, but its grim nature is not lost on Ms Heald. “It’s unfortunate really that we need these things, but ultimately, what we do is protect, so I think we’re doing a very worthwhile thing,” she says.

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