CONSTRUCTION SERVICES & EQUIPMENT
offers easy disposal of sludge, but its cake can also be sold as a secondary product. This offers operators 100% recycling and a sellable end material, essentially turning unwanted waste into incremental revenue for customers!”
Water-clarifying unit
It may all sound a bit revolutionary for wheel-washers, but the same could have been said four years ago when McCumesky released a washer with a water-clarifying unit. In 2004 he manufactured and sold 18 of these units, last year it was 26, and he is now up to 60 units per annum.
Hippowash entered the European market in 2010 and is in the process of launching a major offensive into Europe, looking to double output by 2014. Hippowash is close to signing a major exclusive contract with a European partner.
If growth continues at the same pace, ex- plained McCumesky, the fi rm will have to move from its 929m2 to at least a 2,800m2
workspace in Crewe operation.
He hasn’t found anything yet, but there are options, he said, and he has already started the process of hiring new sales staff and a product manager to add to the current 22 staff members.
Under the waves
It is all a long way from his early days as a mechanic on nuclear submarines, which he feels gave him a good business grounding. He said: “Living and working at close quar- ters for long periods with others in subma- rines makes you very tolerant of people.
“I was a mechanic dealing with keeping the nuclear plant purring. I kept the main turbo generators running along with purifi - cation systems and air purifi cation pumps. I suppose there is a link there with Hippo- wash,” he mused.
He left the Navy to get into business. “I’ve always been a bit of a wheeler dealer,” he admitted. Computer training after the Navy led him into a “dull operations job” before he gained a HND in business studies from Stockport college and moved to sales in FMCG and then came steel stockholding.
He said: “I knew engineering from my Navy days and the cut-throat FMCG mar- ket had honed my sales skills.
“When I got to my mid-30s, after selling for a range of fi rms, I thought it was time to set up my own steel company. So I borrowed
£5,000 from Barclays Bank and this was the birth of CDM Steels.”
McCumesky had Rieter Scragg as a major client when he started in 1994 and the £5,000 allowed him to buy steel and work from the kitchen table. By 1995 he had a storage yard and started to get into profi ling.
Within a couple of years the company had grown but the market was shifting. Rieter Scragg shipped its work out to Eastern Eu- rope and India and McCumesky saw the need for a broader business base. One new
customer CDM picked up was Wheelwash, an event that would help shape Hippowash.
“We built the fabrications for Wheelwash for a couple of years and so it gave us a good grounding in the needs of these sys- tems and potential areas for improvement through our experience as fabrication engi- neers,” he explained.
The move to large wheel-washers Below:
Hippowash Elite System – landfi ll site, Scotland
With foot-and-mouth came the impetus to capitalise on this knowledge and out came its CemKleen product, targeted at cars and light vehicles. CDM also supplied control panels, pumps, motors and sensors along with the fabrication. So from there it was only a small step to large vehicle wheel- washer systems.
“In late 2001 we built our fi rst prototype machine,” explained McCumesky. “It was close to the product we have now, although the construction of the platform has just undergone a radical re-design. It was de- signed to withstand the weight and dynam- ic pressure of the hundreds of 45-tonne vehicles running over it and rumble off the muck from the heavy treads.
“We also took a different approach to the way the water was actually sprayed; it is the combination of pressure, volume and spray direction that combine to form the most effective wheel-washer system on the mar- ket. The way Hippowash does this allows us to get water to the parts of the vehicle that are important, such as in between the treads, between the mudguards and under the chassis.”
Hippowash developed a machine that is rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 12 | 59
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92