• • • EDITOR’S INTERVIEW • • •
Ellis Patents to celebrate its Diamond anniversary in 2022
Ellis Patents will celebrate its 60th anniversary in 2022; Simon King headed to Malton, North Yorkshire, to meet Richard Shaw, the company’s chairman, to see how the business has evolved over the last six decades
In the current financial year, Mr Shaw said that
the business has had a good year and he forecasted that turnover will be around the £7 million mark, with a headcount of 60 people. Mr Shaw said that renewables is a very big
market for Ellis Patents, along with business in data centres and oil and gas. One of the products Ellis Patents has been
developing is cable hangers. “On the London Underground, we sell
galvanised steel hangers to go in the tunnels,” Mr Shaw said. “Bizarrely, the people who are looking after the London Underground don’t know who all the cables belong to, it’s very unclear. “We were asked to come up with a hanger they
could put in next to the existing metal hangers without disturbing the cables that are already there, so that if anything happens to the existing metal hanger, the new cable hanger will be there to support the cables and they won’t drop on the ground.” Ellis Patents came up with a special design, a
E
llis Patents was founded in 1962 by Arthur Ellis, who was a Wellington bomber pilot during the Second World War, flying more
than 100 missions. Mr Ellis recognised plastic was the material of
the future and Ellis Patents was born. Before retiring in 1987, Mr Ellis sold the business to its current shareholders, fronted by Chris Calvert, and secured its long-term future. Richard Shaw joined the business in 2001 as
managing director. Mr Shaw said: “Mr Ellis was an inventor; he
designed products, made his own tooling and started making plastic products and selling them into the plumbing market and into the electrical market to the utility companies. “When he sold the business and retired in 1987,
it had only six employees..” When Richard joined Ellis Patents, it had a
turnover of just under £2 million. “I’d come from an American corporation where I
was responsible for around 600 people” he said. “Coming to Ellis Patents, it looked small, but it had potential and was completely independent. “Ellis Patents is owned by its shareholders, and I
became a shareholder when I joined. I was asked to buy shares, and from the day I joined, I’ve felt part of it, and that I could do something with it.” Mr Shaw stepped down as managing director in
October 2020, and became company chairman. The company’s then operations director, Danny
Macfarlane, was appointed managing director. Mr Shaw said that he was attracted to the
business as it’s independent, had products. and there was a creative element to it. ‘Chris Calvert was also an engineer and an
inventor; he was the inventor of the Emperor and Vulcan cable cleats and still today, the Emperor cable cleat is probably the leading product in the world. “By the time I got there, in 2001, it had grown
from eight people up to about 30-odd people and it had a turnover of just under £2m.” In previous roles, Mr Shaw had worked in export
sales, so he brought an export angle to it. “We continue to do product development and we
just grew over the next 20 years,” he said. “It’s been a really fun story of product
development, travelling and selling things all around the world. We’ve been very successful, and you can tell we’ve been very successful because of the number of competitors that we’ve generated.” Mr Shaw said that the business had 55
employees when COVID hit, and sales dropped. “Our financial year ends at the end of February,
so COVID started at the beginning of our financial year,” he said. “For the next six months, our sales dropped by
around about half – we had about 45% of the staff on the furlough scheme at the peak, and our sales dropped off until August, when they started picking up and they’ve been strong ever since.”
10 ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING • DECEMBER 2021/JANUARY 2022
plastic backplate that you fasten to the wall behind the cables – you can slide it in behind the cables, fasten it to the wall, and then the actual hangers themselves slide into the backplate and they can support the cables if they fail. “Because they are designed to work in tunnels
there’s no UV, so they don’t degrade – they actually will last longer,” Mr Shaw said. “These things have a life that’s longer than a steel galvanised product – and it’s really light and easy to install; that’s a unique product that we’ve been developing for the rail industry.” Also in the rail industry, if they want to increase
capacity, they might want to install another cable run and Ellis Patents developed a new product, which is called No Bolts Cleat. Mr Shaw said: “You put your cable in the No
Bolts Cleat, in the first instance, and then the second cable cleat can be installed on top; it just locks into place and you drop your new cable in. “It was designed to answer a specific safety
concern raised by Network Rail. – They needed a product that would enable them to install new cable runs in the same place as existing ones, but without having to move live cables during the process. The design did exactly that and not only solved the safety issue, but won a number of innovation awards.” Mr Shaw said that Ellis Patents has done
some work for Siemens over the years and once was invited to visit its head office in Germany to discuss an offshore renewable energy project
electricalengineeringmagazine.co.uk
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