Abstract
In 2012, JWF celebrated 50 years of trading by posting its best ever year. From humble roots as a Glasgow-based sales agent for Fischer & Porter variable area flow meters, JWF has grown into a business that supplies instrumentation solutions to a wide range of process and energy industries in Scotland and the North of England. In 2012, JWF Instrumentation was recognised by ABB as their Instrumentation Alliance Partner of the year and as WIKA’s top partner.
Jimmy Fairbairn left Weir Pumps in 1959 and started his agency business, which was incorporated as JW Fairbairn Ltd in 1962. By 1969, Jimmy had added Chromalox and WIKA to the Fischer & Porter sales agency and was also providing equipment servicing. Following Jimmy’s untimely death in 1976, the company was run by his business partner, John Robertson, until his retirement in 2000, when Jimmy’s son Kenneth, who had joined in 1980 following an engineering apprenticeship, took up the baton. Under his leadership, JWF Process Solutions, as the company had been renamed to reflect its extended capabilities, continued to expand. Today, the team has grown to 20 strong and has added Flexim ultrasonic flow measurement, WIKA level controllers and JM Canty process vessel equipment to the established ABB flow, pressure, temperature, level and analytical product ranges. One of the most significant growth areas has seen JWF cross Hadrian’s Wall, not as an invader but by invitation. In 2007, ABB was looking for an experienced sales partner to service the rapidly developing energy, oil and gas market in the North of England and suggested that JWF might consider taking on that role. The result was the establishment of JWF Instrumentation in Billingham in the heartland of the North East process and energy sectors.
A recent addition to the company’s portfolio is the Flexim range of ultrasonic flow meters. Because they are non-intrusive, ultrasonic meters have grown in popularity. They can also be installed temporarily by simply clamping the sensor to the outside of a pipe. This has led JWF into a new service market: meter rental with support from a field engineer to set up the system. Temporary metering is a useful forensic and auditing tool. Once considered to be of questionable accuracy, the latest generation of ultrasonic meters offer excellent performance, and JWF is frequently asked to install a temporary meter to check the calibration of installed meters.
Despite the recent doom and gloom of the recession, the family-owned business is thriving. Sales Director, Martin Kerlin, puts this down to experience and expertise. ‘Industry is losing a lot of expertise in instrumentation and control as senior engineers retire and are replaced by younger inexperienced guys’, says Martin, an Engineering graduate of Strathclyde University who has been with JWF since 2000. ‘We have fifty years of continuous experience with the same instrumentation products and that means we can help process control engineers specify the right type of instrument for the application’. That long experience means that JWF are well placed to help with upgrades to existing instruments that have become obsolete. ‘We’re not just a part number company’, says Martin, ‘we have project management skills that can help with logistics and project delivery – that’s why we have rebranded ourselves as The Instrumentalists’.
