Member Article

Queen's Award for Pearson Engineering

Pearson Engineering Limited is pleased to announce that it has been awarded The Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade.

In a four year period, the defence company increased turnover by 380%, from £43m to £207m, with exports accounting for over 98% of sales.

Pearson Engineering designs and manufactures a range of counter mine and counter IED equipment as well as combat engineering equipment that increase the capability of armoured fighting vehicles. Its product range includes mine ploughs, bulldozer blades, surface clearance devices, mine rollers and bridge launching mechanisms all of which can be fitted to a host armoured vehicle using quick attach and release kits.

The company’s growth has been achieved by adopting a philosophy of heavily investing in Research and Development; designing, developing and improving its products and aligning these investments carefully with anticipated market trends and opportunities. Maintaining its position as a market leader in the defence sector, Pearson’s design engineering teams strive to develop innovative products that are immediately available off the shelf to meet the challenges its customers face and which can be quickly tailored to specific requirements

The sale of one of the company’s core products, the Self Protection Adaptive Roller Kit (SPARK) system, is an example of how this approach pays dividends. SPARK is a modular mine roller system designed to be mounted on wheeled and tracked vehicles. It is designed to trigger IEDs in front of the host vehicle, protecting it and its occupants. As a result of this pioneering approach, Pearson Engineering was the region’s sole winner of The Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation in 2012.

When the US army was looking for a system to help tackle the emerging Improvised Explosive Device (IED) threat to soldiers and vehicles, responsible for almost 40% of US casualties in Operation Iraqi Freedom, they were able to turn to Pearson Engineering, which had already developed the SPARK product to meet such a problem. Major contracts soon followed and the rollers have been used extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan and, having triggered hundreds of IEDs that would otherwise have detonated under the vehicles, saving the lives of many allied soldiers.

Significant exports to the US market has helped to raise the profile of Pearson Engineering and it is now winning business across the globe.

Chairman of Pearson Engineering, John Reece said,

“We are obviously very pleased to win the Queen’s Award for the second successive year, this time for enterprise in international trade. This recognises many years of export efforts by Pearson Engineering; indeed many of our products are class leaders and in use globally.

“The mine plough and roller products are the fruits of decades of R & D and, indeed, the mine plough has been under development for nearly 50 years, linking back to our history of designing agricultural ploughs and the development of subsea ploughing for burying pipelines and cables.

“We are aiming to continue our worldwide niche business with an ever broadening range of innovative engineering products. We are now investing in the development of new mine clearance systems as well as a range of mobile bridge laying equipment that is faster to deploy, more flexible and more reliable than that currently in the market place.

I would like to thank all our employees for helping us achieve this Queen’s Award, without top quality people we wouldn’t be where we are today.“

Pearson Engineering Limited is a part of the Reece Group, one of the North East’s leading innovative engineering businesses, operating in the defence, oil and gas, construction and subsea markets.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Mandy Peel .