Saftronics have been awarded the first of several orders to manufacture the MCC’s for Southern Water’s catchment management and nitrate removal scheme. The MCC’s will be installed early this year. Southern Water’s catchment management scheme will provide a long term sustainable solution to protect water from rising nitrate levels.

Saftronics are delighted to welcome Graham Tester to our ever-expanding team. Graham Tester joins as Regional Sales Manager. Graham will have overall responsibility for the sales activities for the South of England.

Graham will be responsible for the management of existing customers, focussing on delivering high-quality service and customer satisfaction levels. He will also be building on our extensive network of consultants across the various sectors we operate in including oil & gas, chemical, water, power generation, transport & logistics and many more.

Graham lives in Worthing, West Sussex. He joins us from Eaton.

Mark Godfrey, Managing Director comments “We are delighted to welcome Graham to our team. He has extensive knowledge and a proven track record in our sector. We feel he fits our company values of focussing on quality and reliability and putting customers at the heart of everything we do.”

Darren Motley from Electrium Sales Ltd – Siemens recently visited to present us with a certificate for successfully passing an audit for the manufacture of the Siemens Sivacon product.

Saftronics have very strong links with Siemens. They have been a SIVACON Technology Partner since 2004 and an Automation and Drives Partner since 2008. Furthermore they are the only Siemens partner to hold both of these partnerships.

Last year we joined the West & North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce. The Leeds Manufacturing Alliance is the manufacturing arm of this. We feel privileged to have been invited to sit on the Steering Committee for this. The group lobbies and represents the interests of manufacturing companies across the region.

At Saftronics we have four core values that dictate our every action on a day to day basis. Nobody is above these values; if a director isn’t acting in accordance with them then the new apprentice can hold them accountable.

One of the core values we have is Quality Without Compromise. This means that every single day we strive to be the best we can be. This radiates throughout the business, from customer service to product design. However, nowhere is this more prevalent than on the factory floor.

This is where we assemble all of the assets that are ultimately sent out to customers and rest assured, nothing leaves our facility that we are not 100% satisfied with.

However, it is not enough to simply hold ourselves accountable. We don’t want to be the best in comparison just to ourselves. We want to be the best in comparison to everyone. And one of the best ways for us to achieve this is to ensure that we work in accordance with a number of external accreditations.

Without fail, we produce assets that are built in accordance with IEC 61439. This is standard practice for all at Saftronics. But as well as this. We are the only Siemens SIVACON partners in the UK. A hard-earned status which saw us pass, and continue to pass, frequent independent audits. This also places us in the enviable position to work very closely with Siemens, to the point where are able offer our take on the route their product development should take in its next step.

Along with this we are particularly proud of continuing to satisfy our ISO9001 quality management system and TickITplus audit requirements. To do so meant that we had to develop a number of new processes internally, which included incorporation of the tiniest details such as regular tool calibration and multipoint testing by numerous members of staff. Continuous improvement is essential in our sector and here at Saftronics we strive for excellence in everything we do.

To find out more about our core values, our other accreditations, or to enquire about our services you can visit our contact page.

As we expand and grow it is critical for Saftronics that we recruit and retain the right talent. Our engineering department is considered one of the leading groups of software engineers in the ICA instrument control and automation sector.

We are therefore delighted to welcome Jamie Reeve who joins us as a Senior Engineer – Digital Systems. Jamie Reeve has recently relocated to Doncaster after moving from Bristol where he worked at Wessex Water.

Jonathan Robinson, Technical Director ‘Recruitment is fundamental to our strategic growth plan for 2019. Finding talent like Jamie’s was a real plus for us. We always look to recruit people who can add value, not only to customers but to our own team too. With our support we see him doing exactly this.’

Saftronics are delighted to welcome Claire Balcerzak to our project management team. Claire joins us as a project manager and will be responsible for ensuring that our customers receive support and assistance through their whole journey with Saftronics from order placement, through engineering and manufacturing, right up to installation and commissioning on site.

Claire lives in Pontefract in West Yorkshire. She joins us from a similar role at Yorkshire Water.

Mark Godfrey, Managing Director comments “For us it is all about people taking pride in the service that our customers receive and in the quality of the products we design and manufacture. It was clear that Claire shared these core values and was familiar with our market sector. We are delighted to welcome her to the Saftronics family.”

We pride ourselves on many things here at Saftronics: the care and attention we take in our work, the levels of customer service we provide. Another still is the people who work here.

We don’t like to think that we employ people here at Saftronics, rather we welcome them into the fold. We take our time when interviewing new staff as we want to keep them for a long time. To help them grow and flourish both professionally and personally while they are here.

On that note, we are huge advocates of finding and nurturing new talent. We have recently brought in a number of apprentices. During their time here they will work with a mentor and will spend time in most branches of the organisation before hopefully staying on with us and specialising in a particular department once their apprenticeship is completed.

On that note, we have a legacy of retaining staff at Saftronics. We like to tell the story that our Technical Director started work at Saftronics as an apprentice 36 years ago. But he’s not the only one. We have 12 members of staff who have been here 20 years or longer with the longest closing in on 40 years (who also started as an apprentice).

But we don’t just like to bring people on and leave them to their own devices. We like to push and encourage them to train, grow and learn. If a member of the team shows promise or a natural inclination to a particular specialism then we encourage them to run with it. Currently we have 10 members of staff who started on the shop floor and have since progressed into other areas of the business. One of them being everybody’s favourite Head of Sales and Marketing, Paul Stead.

There are a number of reasons why we do this, but to be perfectly honest there is a level of selfishness involved too. At the beginning of this article we mentioned the pride we take in our work. To be able to uphold the standards we want we work hard to source the best team and then encourage them to progress. It’s the only way we can keep the quality of all our assets as good as they are.

If you would like to know more about any of the services we provide, get in touch here.