Seal specialist reaches new markets with innovative products

However, without these materials virtually every aspect of daily life would grind to a halt. 

In very simple terms, elastomers are a broad family of rubber materials used for a range of applications including seals. And few businesses understand them better or have a longer history of making them than James Walker and Co, in Cockermouth. 

The company formulates and compounds its own specialist elastomer materials, then manufactures seals for use in sectors including the nuclear industry, submarines, chemical plants, aerospace and power generation to name but a few. 

In 2019 James Walker, which was founded in 1882 and has now expanded into a global engineering group, marked the 50th anniversary of its Cockermouth site near the River Derwent. Throughout its history the business has been an innovator in both materials and sealing system design, recently expanding its solutions to meet the challenges faced by customers in the biopharmaceutical industry, as well as the ever growing market for green energy. 

“With global recession, the Covid pandemic, rocketing raw material, labour, logistics and energy costs, recent years have been hard work for most businesses,” says site director Ed Surman.  

“We stayed open and continued production through the worst days of the pandemic as a critical supplier to the energy and biopharmaceutical industries – helping to keep the lights on and playing a significant part in enabling the rapid production increases that were required for vaccines by the global biopharmaceutical industry. It was very satisfying to know that the expertise, hard work and dedication of our people here in Cumbria had a direct impact upon the production of vaccines that ultimately helped conquer the Covid virus and potentially save millions of lives. 

“It's a great example of the skill of our people that we have the capability to meet the demands of critical applications with very demanding performance requirements. In this instance we have been able to develop a unique material that is resistant to the harsh cleaning regimes of biopharmaceutical plants; it is formulated, compounded and turned into the final product here on the Cockermouth site. I think it's something that we should be very proud of as a business.” 

Another growth area for James Walker has been the design and manufacture of seals for the wind turbine industry. The seals are required to contain the grease or oil lubricant inside bearings – critical for the reliable long-term operation of the turbine and generation of power. 

With the move to offshore power generation, current turbines are getting ever larger. The latest has a tip to tip blade span of 220 metres and generates enough electricity with a single rotation of its blades to power a typical British household for two whole days. 

The size of the turbines and forces involved stress key components like never before. James Walker has developed a new seal construction concept, designed to work effectively when the bearings are exposed to high loads from the wind turbine’s rotation.

"We've just made some rotary seals that are five metres in diameter for the next generation of wind turbines and they are always getting bigger and we must constantly innovate in our product design and manufacturing processes in order to keep pace with the latest developments in wind turbine design,” explains Geoff Teasdale, rotary seals product manager. 

“With our new generation concept we've totally rethought traditional designs, taken a combination of elastomeric components, metallic springs and glass cord materials and we've brought them together in a unique configuration that has advanced sealing performance. The offshore wind turbine industry provides us with many challenges and the cost of product failure is unthinkable because of the disruption this would cause.  

“Costs of maintenance and repair are high but at the same time the industry is very competitive in trying to generate power at the lowest possible cost. As a result, component manufacturers such as James Walker are under pressure to deliver innovation whilst all the time seeking to drive down costs.” 

The new generation of James Walker seals is now in use in some of the biggest wind farms in the world, including in China, Scandinavia, Brazil, France and Germany, as well as closer to home in the vast facility in the Irish Sea off the Cumbrian coast. 

On land or offshore, wind turbines need to be maintained, which can require key elements such as a main shaft, gearbox or blade root seals to be changed.  

To save wind farm operators the astronomical cost of removing an entire set of blades in order to replace these parts, the company has developed a method whereby its seals can be installed and joined in situ with the minimum possible requirement for plant strip-down and disassembly. 

"Our technique for seal replacement is now well proven to provide the highest levels of seal performance and save significant cost whilst also minimising the amount of lost generating time,” says Geoff. 

“Our technicians will often supervise these installations in the field or, if the customer wants us to, we will carry out the fitting for them with our own teams of qualified engineers.” 

In order to service the demand for increased seal sizes and growing volume of orders from the offshore wind sector, James Walker has invested in new, larger presses at its Cockermouth site, plus developed its own bespoke equipment for the cutting and preparation of seals for the joining process where in situ fitting is needed. 

Although the wind farm sector currently only accounts for five per cent of its business - compared with zero 10 years ago - it is expected to continue to grow exponentially.  

Alongside this and the rapidly expanding biopharma market, the company’s traditional core customers such as oil and gas and defence remain strong.  

James Walker is also working on developments with customers in new applications such as hydrogen, carbon capture and solar energy.  

“Our facilities and workforce here in Cockermouth are continually changing and adapting to meet the needs of the markets we serve,” says Ed. 

“When our future was threatened due to the risk of further flood events, with the support of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership we built a £2.5 million flood defence system to protect the site and we are now making our operation greener by installing solar panels and working on our manufacturing processes to improve efficiency and reduce waste wherever possible. 

"Our whole range of activity is vertically integrated, from formulating our own materials, and compounding them from raw materials that we buy in, to the design of housings for seals, designing seals to go into those housings, even the design of the tools that we use to actually manufacture those seals; all of that activity can be carried out in-house. 

"That's the real value a customer gets when they come to James Walker, you get the combination of all that expertise and knowledge.”