Oxford Flow: Successful 12 Months in Face of Pandemic Challenges

Oxford Flow, the flow control equipment specialist for oil, gas, water and industrial process industries has announced some successes over the past 12 months despite pandemic. The company said this was aided by the £12.55 million (€14.6 million) investment that was secured in 2020 from Georg Fischer Piping Systems.

Neil Poxon, CEO of Oxford Flow, said: “Despite COVID-19, we are fortunate to have had many successes as a business over the last year. Our team has grown from strength to strength, demonstrating resilience and leadership, enabling our innovative flow control technologies to help drive the water, energy and industrial process industries to be more cost effective, sustainable and operationally efficient. Last year also saw the opening of our new R&D and manufacturing facility in Oxford, which has enabled us to build and deliver orders more efficiently – offering improved lead times and stock capacity. In addition, we announced Iain Conn, Ex-Centrica and BP Group CEO, joining our board to strengthen the leadership team and help guide our strategic direction.”

He added; “In terms of our technology, the IM valve was accepted onto a framework agreement with SGN with installations for full asset replacement schemes across the UK and, earlier this year, it received recognition as a potential solution for the decarbonisation of the national heating and energy infrastructure. Our ES series axial flow valve has also had a pivotal year, with its successful testing at the Equinor Karsto facility as well as achieving fugitive emissions ISO 15848-1 certification and fire safety API 6FA.” Poxon said the company has an aggressive and ambitious growth plan ahead to drive more sustainable and efficient operations across the sectors we serve.

He added: “We will be further developing our technology to support the decarbonisation and sustainable development of the energy sector. For example, as gas networks consider the transition to hydrogen, our team are ensuring that our IM valve can support this development by optimising its hydrogen compatible stainless-steel design to allow operators to accelerate the deployment of new, low carbon technologies safely and effectively across their networks.We will also be focusing on the development of our intelligent technologies to compliment the game changing flow control designs of our valves. Digitisation, automation and analytics will form a key part of our product offering over the coming years. As we continue to grow, we will be expanding our geographic footprint and scaling our manufacturing capabilities to meet growing demand as well as building strategic partnerships within our key industries.”

The managing director said the firm’s mission was to support the industries it works with to drive down costs, increase operational efficiencies and reduce environmental impact through research backed innovation. He concluded: “The investment we have made into our team will enable us to penetrate new market sectors and provide our exceptional field service and technical support to a wider range of customers. As we see the energy and water industries face mounting challenges like tackling emissions and reducing non-revenue water, the expertise and experience of our team will be invaluable to provide innovative solutions to overcome these challenges."

“Our combination of breakthrough technology and the best in global talent allow us to offer our customers the best solutions to these challenges. For example, as well as reducing costs for operators, the IM valve provides a more accurate and stable control of network pressures, more predictable performance, extended asset life cycles and reduced emissions through reduced intrusive maintenance. Our ES series axial flow valve improves reliability for oil and gas operators, reducing downtime and planned maintenance, which in turn, reduces costs. The ES provides up to 1000x better fugitive emission performance than the other commonly used isolation and control valves.”