All fired up by exports
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Fire brigades the world over are beating a path to West Yorkshire to call on specialist vehicle maker, Angloco for new and rebuilt kit.
by Bryan Jarvis II Kuwait, Hong Kong, Mauritius, St Lucia, Indonesia and Beijing are exotic locations in a travel agent's window but they also happen to be where the customers are for West Yorkshire fire engine manufacturer Angloco.
It builds a wide range of appliances based on Land Rovers, standard truck chassis and up to the larger Unipower air crash tenders.
Most of these are for the home market but exports are shaping up well, especially to Nigerian clients who are paying for their appliances via European sources.
A typical overseas order is the crew-cabbed Leyland Daf Comet 12.13 currently in build, a 4x4 multi-media appliance for one of the Zambian copper mines.
Angloco's main string to its bow is a new vehicle production for UK brigades but it also refurbishes their old ones and provides after-sales.
Most of the new-build contracts have a high degree of technical content, particularly on specialist vehicles for petroleum and chemical contractors.
Brigades are not so well off these days but interest in 4x4s continues to grow.
Tenders
North Yorkshire's fire service has ordered five water tenders on compact 3.09m Mercedes 917AF chassis with all-wheel drive.
They will be used across vast rural areas where the off-road capability will be needed.
In addition to a PT-0-driven 2,300 lit/min (500 gal/min) rear pump, each has an independently driven high-pressure pump for dousing moorland fires.
Cambridgeshire also has a Mercedes 4x4 in build, a 1124AF rescue tender.
Its body system combines a patented Rosenbauer swingout shelving system in which to store loose equipment. Drop-down steps allow access to the gear stowed on the racks.
Each vehicle costs in the region of £120,000 complete with Superwinches front and rear.
One of Angloco's best known specialities is the Finnish-made Bronto Skylift truck-mounted aerial rescue platform which it began selling in the UK in 1988.
Despite its high cost 24 brigades have either ordered or received 38 into their fleets to date.
The latest pair in build are F30 HDT 30m platforms on Scania P113HL and Volvo FL10 6x4 chassis for Staffordshire and Clwyd fire services.
Typical of its specials are two breathing apparatus tenders on Renault M230.15D Midliners. Each has a built-in Compair Reavell compressor and charging panel capable of filling up to eight breathing air cylinders at 50.6m3/hr at 207 bar working pressure.
Angloco's third water tender for the Jersey brigade also happened to be the first narrow 210 Strato to come from Seddon Atkinson's production line.
It comes with 8,200 litre water tank and rear-mount Rosenbauer N30 fire pump.
Angloco began to specialise in 1982 when it started selling German-made Metz turntable ladders followed in 1988 by the Bronto Skylift.
It also represents Hagglunds which builds all-terrain vehicles but at £120,000 per base unit there are not many buyers around.
Brighter
"This year things look brighter," says chairman and managing director Bill Brown. "We have sufficient orders in the bag to take us through to October which is twice as good as this time last year."
He also plans to develop the 2,800m2 Batley production capability. Spares and service back up business is healthy and so too is refurbishing existing fire tenders, says Brown.
A recent overhaul programme from the MoD worth around £4m was to uprate 88 of the RAF's 12-14 year old Nubian Major based Mk9 crash tenders over four years.
This involved Cummins engine, SCG gearboxes and pump rebuilds as well as the body systems.
Angloco does little in the way of mass production work. Instead there's increasing use of advanced hydraulics and electronic/electrical componentry on ever more specialist first and second line fire-fighting vehicles.
There's also the health units that it builds and indeed any sort of 'special' that have hydraulic drive units fitted.
"All of this calls for a growing commitment to training which is why we run regular inhouse courses on building and maintaining such equipment".
There are four auto-electricians and two full time apprentices who take day release to Kitson College in Leeds among Angloco's 55-strong workforce.
With the high cost of labour today, Brown says: "It's no good simply pulling in big volume contracts. You have to specialise to remain in today's market place. Volume is vanity but profit is sanity".