A DETERMINED boss is celebrating a remarkable turnaround after becoming a key supplier to his former employer.

Six years ago, David Franks and his colleagues faced redundancy when Pentair Water closed its Billingham factory and shifted plant and machinery to Belgium.

This week, shipments of that machinery will return to the Tees Valley after Mr Franks' bought it back from the same people that quit the North-East when the recession struck.

The move is testament to the hard work of Mr Franks and his team – now based in a 2,500 sq ft unit in Darlington – as they gear up to become a major exporter of industrial filtration products.

After he left his position as a director at multi-national Pentair Water in 2009, Mr Franks founded Aycliffe Filtration Limited (AFL) with business partner Paul Gullett.

“It felt frightening to go it alone,” he recalled.

“People said I was crazy. It was the depths of the recession and we had only one customer. I have to thank Gerard Wiper of Tyne Tees Packaging who kindly gave us some space in his warehouse to set up Aycliffe Filtration.

“We started with an overdraft of £6,000 and now we export all over the world," said Mr Franks.

Using their decades of experience the entrepreneurs filled their order book by manufacturing and supplying filters designed to remove oil, hydrocarbons and other impurities from water.

Mr Franks added: “Customers kept coming back to us. They valued a UK manufactured product. Whereas suppliers in China were only interested in bulk orders, we would handle small scale stuff and adapt products specifically for a client’s requirements. That gave us an advantage.”

Buying 25 pieces of high spec machinery from his former employer in Belgium will enable Mr Franks' to take a huge step forward.

He admits that he will struggle to find space for all of the new kit, which includes a Swiss-made automatic winding machine, that he helped to design.

He said: “It will be strange seeing it again. Having these machines here will enable us to produce a huge range of cylinders; improve lead and delivery times, and make us a big player in the UK and Europe. We will become a one stop shop like we had been in Billingham. It’s really exciting.”

Getting the new machinery up-and-running is the immediate challenge, but Mr Franks expects he will need a bigger factory before too long, and he plans to grow his business within Darlington.

The company exports 80 per cent of its products abroad, with Japan, Taiwan, France and the Netherlands all key markets. Its key sectors are the marine, and offshore oil and gas industries, but the products can be adapted for wherever waste water needs cleaning.

AFL’s filters are at Heathrow Airport to help recycle water used to clean terminal vehicles, and units have been shipped from Darlington to a villa complex Palma, in Majorca to treat household waste water so it is clean enough to water gardens.

All of this has been achieved with a skeleton staff of three. There are plans to double the workforce in the coming weeks.

Mr Franks said: “We are looking to bring back some of the people we worked with at Billingham because they have the specialist skills. I’m just delighted to have been able to achieve all of this from the North-East.

"It’s not been easy but things are looking really good for us right now."