Ventilation Innovation

Spiralite® is a UK success story and a real tale of a small company disrupting a traditional market. The ducting business does not sound very glamorous and for half a century manufacturers have used galvanised steel tubes to move air around offices. Bulky and inefficient, these tubes are the industry standard in a sector lacking in innovation.

Enter Peter Merrien and Peter Dudley, who decided to shake things up. Their new approach involved eschewing metal altogether and instead opting for foam insulation. Foam had been considered before this, but their genius involved working out how to manipulate it and make it round, like existing pipes. 

Patented technology cuts grooves into sheets of foam, then the sheets are efficiently rolled into pipes and voila! - long-lasting, lightweight, non-leaky, thermally efficient, environmentally friendly ducting for the office of today. Off cuts are recycled and transformed into kitchen work surfaces. 

99 Clifton Street prides itself on its forward thinking credentials and was therefore keen to adopt this new approach. The benefits for are that Spiralite®’s light weight means it requires less man-power to fit on site, as there is no heavy lifting, welding or cutting. It also makes air conditioning systems more efficient due to the lack of leakage, clever shapes and low frictional resistance. Double bonus.   

The managing director, Mel Ragnauth is keen for the decision making to move further up the chain. ‘At the moment we sell mostly to mechanical services companies and the building trade, but we are excited that modern developers like UBS on 99 Clifton St, are taking a more active role. That way more innovative ideas with real benefits to the end user can make it onto sites.’

 

Spiralite®’s journey has been a relatively quick one - seven years ago it was at the design stage and it has only been running commercially for four. Octopus Investments, a UK private equity company, saw the potential and invested in the firm last September. Octopus have a considerable track record in helping energy-saving technologies grow into big businesses. In the UK alone the ducting market could be worth up to half a billion pounds, so there is plenty of room for more growth. 

On my visit to their factory it was hard not to be impressed by the product, as it lay around like enormous bits of Meccano. As we were there gigantic, primary coloured sections, destined for the outside of Guy’s Hospital, were being craned onto lorries. There is a real buzz in the factory, generated by the enthusiasm of all the staff, who believe this is the future. 

 

          

So, whilst Spiralite® might never manage to make ducting sound exciting, they can certainly give it the twenty-first century twist that fits exactly with the Clifton Street approach.