Sunderland business Grundfos takes on record order

An eight-strong team at pump manufacturer Grundfos completed work on a huge fire suppressant package designed and built for a company based in the North West.

The order took six weeks to complete, and involved integrating pumps made at Grundfos’s German base.

Andy Coe, mechanical design engineer at Grundfos and lead contact for the contract, explained: “It’s our largest engineered-to-order (ETO) contract to date and took just six weeks to build once we’d received the pumps from Germany.” The ETO work sees Sunderland-based engineers design specific solutions for companies and organisations that are then manufactured on site by the Castletown workforce, and is a growing area of the business.

“The unit, which is about 11m by 3m, houses two big diesel pumps, which will provide water to sprinkler heads throughout the client’s large site in the event of fire,” said Andy.

“For a site of their size, it’s usual to have two pumps – one for duty and one on stand-by, just in case.

“The unit was designed, engineered and built here in close consultation with the client. It will be fully tested on-site before being transported to the client.”

Grundfos general manager Mark Lister added: “It’s important we have the capability to be able to produce such large ETO packages here in Sunderland.

“The ETO market is an area of growth for us and one in which we have a good reputation and real expertise. This latest order is a good example of what we can produce here.

“The difference with these units is the size, but it’s a credit to our workforce that we can design, engineer and manufacture such packages.”