Who you gonna call? . . . dustbusters

SITTING in the port of Aqaba, in Jordan, a long cargo ship is moored up with what appears to be a trail of thick smoke winding above it.

Such is the smoke’s density; it looks as if the ship could be on fire – an immediate threat to the homes which can be seen on the hillside, lights twinkling in the darkness. But the ship is not on fire.

“It’s actually sitting under a cloud of dust,” says Ian Barnard, managing director of bulk loading specialists Cleveland Cascades, as he points to the image on his computer screen.

“The problem they had is that they are developing Aqaba as a tourist resort, as it is famous for its diving areas and coral. The phosphate dust being released when they loaded the ships was settling on the sea, sinking, and smothering the coral and was unsightly for tourists. So we were brought in to install two of our systems which brought the dust levels down to less than 5mg.”

To demonstrate, he refers to his smart office based at Teesside Industrial Estate, Thornaby, near Stockton.

“In this room, there’s probably only about 1mg of dust,” he says. “So that gives you some idea how small an amount 5mg is. It’s a remarkably low level of dust emissions compared with what some jobs are like when we arrive. Many of the contracts we work on, you can’t even see the ship for dust when we first get there.”

As well as being managing director of Cleveland Cascades, Mr Barnard is the co-inventor of the Cascade system – a revolutionary solution for the clouds of sometimes hazardous materials which are sent into the air when products are loaded onto ship, rail or road containers.

Traditional chutes can be suspended 20m or more above the hold floor, but the Cascade works by using a series of cones which direct the material, such as sand or corn, down a vertical chute, passing from one to the other in a zigzag fashion.

It slows the material down and eliminates the dust at source without the need for expensive dust extraction systems– which is also better for the environment. An industrial dustbuster, you might call it.

Mr Barnard invented the system in 1995 with former colleague Steve Maxwell while he was engineering manager at the Cleveland Potash bulk terminal at Tees Dock. He then bought the patent from Cleveland Potash and set up Cleveland Cascades Ltd in 2004.

“I built the first unit in my garage and dropped washing powder down it,”

he recalls. “We then went on to build the first full scale unit to be put onto one of the ship loaders at Tees Dock, so it went from the back of a sketch to a full-scale model.

“It’s become such a winning design because the product is so good at what it says it will do – that’s what is great about it.”

Hailing from an engineering background, Mr Barnard says he and his team of designers are always looking at new ways to provide innovative solutions for their clients.

One system which has been developed, the VariFlow, allows the angles of the cones in their Cascade system to move when it recognises that the density of the material has changed – for example from corn to potash – thus affecting the amount of material capable of being handled “That has a benefit for people who handle multiple products in ports who need to control flow rates, and seeing as the ports account for about 80 per cent of our business, that’s who we want to impress,” he says.

And they certainly appear to be impressing. The company has just won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise and its innovative Cascade chute has previous scooped Queen’s Awards for environmental achievement and export achievement, as well as the Engineering Council Environment Award for Engineers. The awards line the corridors of the firm’s head office.

“They mean a great deal to the company and are recognised around the world,” says Mr Barnard. “They’re something for our staff to feel proud of and it sets a very good impression when engineering companies come to see us and they can see them up on the wall. We’re very proud of them.”

The company has also won several plaudits for exporting. Its products are being installed across the world – from Canada and the West Indies to Australia and Israel – and, to date, they’ve never had to advertise.

The market, says Mr Barnard, is led by a pressure to solve an environmental problem, which only increases when added to the number of people being affected by it. He points to a contract they had installing a system in Melbourne, next to a sixstar hotel.

“The hotel was close to an area where 1,500 tonnes of grain was being loaded every hour,” he recalls. “Grain is a respiratory irritant which can kill you. Then there’s the nuisance dust which discolours people’s washing or lands on their cars and looks unsightly.

“Other materials, such as sulphur, are also highly dangerous. Sulphur dust, for example, is potentially explosive, and turns into an acidic solution if it contacts your eyes or skin if you were sweating.”

Each contract the company carries out is a showcase for their equipment – and the work always garners a great deal of attention. “When we were working in Aqaba, we had lots of people gathered around watching our systems work and how we solved the dust problem,” recalls Mr Barnard.

The attention, he says, is generated partly because the dust can cause so many hazards for the people who work and live there.

One contract took the company to Algeria because the dust from the port was blowing onto the homes of nearby wealthy residents – not a section of the community the port wanted to upset. Tourism is also a major factor with many ports wanting to clean up areas around them.

But while the majority of the company’s business is abroad, they have installed several systems in Britain such as at Leith Docks, in Edinburgh, Immingham Port, in Grimsby, Tees Dock, Manchester Ship Canal and Bristol Port, as well as at quarries and rail reception points across the country.

The average job takes 16 weeks from conceptual design to delivery.

Although some clients have postponed commissioning new work, Mr Barnard says they have been largely unaffected by the recession thanks to a £1.53m contract to install a Cascade chute for OCP of Morocco, the world’s largest exporter of phosphate, at the Port of Casablanca.

“Fortunately, the contract came just at the right time and has protected us from the worst effects of the recession and we’re starting to see work pick up again now,” he says.

Part of their success is due to keeping everything in-house at their recently renovated premises. The offices house the electrical and mechanical design, production and assembly workshops, stores and loading bays and a full production team along with sales and administrative staff. The firm has taken on two employees through the North-East Chamber of Commerce recently – a receptionist and purchase ledger clerk – and has received help from the chamber with staff training and development.

In the workshops, the cones for the Cascade are lined with protective ceramic tiles; the strops – which suspend the cones – are stitched and the skirts, which sit at the bottom of the chutes, are sewn. The shrouds, which surround the chutes, are joined together using a hot air welding process. The entire system is then pre-assembled on site before being ready for shipment.

Last year, the company’s turnover was £2.7m, with a projected £3.2m for this year. There are now 28 employees and plans for the future include targeting the US market. The firm has also developed its own range of free fall loading chutes, for those applications where dust isn’t a problem.

“We have an active business development department, which is targeting every port around the world,” says Mr Barnard.

“There’s a huge, growing momentum to clear up dust emissions at ports and storage facilities around the world – and we’re at the forefront of it. I believe we’re the only company in the world which can guarantee dust emissions of less than 5mg and we are structured to build on our reputation and continue to be a global leader in dry bulk loading systems.”