While many businesses have tightened their belts during the pandemic, one Cumbrian firm has invested and created jobs as it becomes an ever more vital part of a global industrial services network.

The origins of TEAM Industrial Services, on Shap Road, Kendal, go back to when American Clay Furman developed the world’s first pipeline leak-sealing compound in 1922, which allowed repairs to be made while products were still flowing down them.

Furman sold the compound as a product, via Alan Forsyth OBE, who had the licence to sell it in the UK.

“Alan recognised that actually you could set this up as a service and have a set of technicians that are trained and are going out every single day and applying the leak sealing techniques,” says Jon Jarvis, region general manager for the UK and Europe.

“He set out with a small group of four or five technicians in the North West and it took off because the customers had a need for it but they couldn’t get their own staff to do it.”

The company Alan ran was known as Furmanite, originally based on Kendal’s Dockray Hall industrial estate.

Over time the company expanded its range of industrial services to include everything from inspection and defect detection to mechanical repair, but with the common theme of carrying out work while systems were still on-line to reduce downtime and the associated financial loss. It designs, manufactures and installs all its own equipment, which mainly takes the form of bespoke solutions to leaks.

Alan, who lived in Grange and died in 2019 aged 91, was also well-known for his time as chair of economic development organisation Furness Enterprise, as well as being a polymath who was a talented poet, writer and artist.

TEAM Industrial Services, a global company with its base in Houston, Texas, acquired Furmanite in 2016, which now employs over 300 people at depots across the UK working at sites including power stations, chemical plants, refineries and shipyards.

Up until TEAM acquired Furmanite the two companies had been competitors, with TEAM dominating in the United States and Furmanite in the UK. However, the move allowed TEAM to gain more traction in Britain, where Furmanite already had permanent service teams embedded on many sites such as refineries.

Although the company employs 100 people in Kendal, it also has six other offices including Carlisle, Grimsby and Falkirk.

“A lot of our revenue and service provision is also in foreign countries; Angola, Nigeria, Azerbaijan and the Middle East,” says Jon.

“It has morphed into having a very international profile.”

Over the last 18 months the firm has been on a recruitment drive after its American owners chose to make it the financial hub for its whole eastern hemisphere operation, which incorporates work TEAM does in every country apart from America and Canada.

"In the last 18 months the finance team has tripled in size," says HR business partner Natalie Clement.

“Financial activity for places like Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, all of mainland Europe and the Middle East is done from Kendal. It created jobs that we wouldn't have been able to otherwise. It’s a real vote of confidence and investment in the team here.”

Jon says the main reason the company came to be based in Kendal is because Alan settled there after marrying wife Jennifer, a local of the town.

However, he says its location now helps attract and retain staff who come to love the Cumbrian lifestyle.

“They are not just buying into the company, they are buying into the lifestyle and this environment around us,” he says.