Pictured above: UK Trade & Investment international
trade adviser Alastair McTavish is pictured left with Stuart
Morgan, managing director of Genvolt
A Shropshire electrical company's products will be used at the
cutting edge of international scientific research - with help from
UK Trade & Investment.
General High Voltage Ltd (trading as Genvolt), of Highley,
designs, develops and manufactures a wide range of high voltage
power supplies, specialising in bespoke products.
It has won a contract worth over £100,000 with CERN, the
world-famous European particle physics laboratory based in Geneva,
for tailor-made 60kV, 300mA capacitor charging power supplies to be
used on the SPS (Super Proton Synchrotron). This is the second
largest machine in CERN's accelerator complex. It takes particles
from the PS (Proton Synchrotron) and accelerates them to provide
beams for the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), CERN's new flagship
particle accelerator.
The company met a key contact at CERN when it exhibited at the
Institution of Engineering & Technology's European pulsed power
conference in Geneva in September, with support from UK Trade &
Investment's Tradeshow Access Programme.
Managing director Stuart Morgan immediately followed this up by
attending a UK Trade & Investment-funded workshop in Oxford on
pitching for business with CERN.
He said: "We were very grateful for the financial support we
received to exhibit in Geneva and the workshop was very useful. I
met the head of purchasing at CERN at this event and we had a
detailed discussion about their requirements and our products.
"We were delighted to win this contract with CERN and look
forward to working with them again in the future."
Genvolt was formed in 1991 and has nine employees. The company
has worked with UK Trade & Investment for a number of years and
has exported to worldwide markets, most recently to France, China
and the USA.
It is currently on UK Trade & Investment's new Gateway to
Global Growth programme, which offers a tailored, needs-based
service with training and ongoing support for exporters with two to
ten years' experience.
This includes an in-depth export review, assistance in
formulating an international trade strategy, networking
opportunities to share best practice and signposting to funding
streams such as financial support for market visits.
Shropshire international trade adviser Alastair McTavish said:
"This is fantastic news for Genvolt and the culmination of a great
deal of hard work and perseverance. Exporting isn't just for large
firms: SMEs such as Genvolt can win significant contracts overseas
if they offer innovative, creative products or services and have
the determination and the will power to succeed."
CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, is one of
the world's largest and most respected centres for scientific
research, studying the basic constituents of matter - the
fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these
particles collide, using some of the largest and most complex
scientific instruments in the world, physicists learn more about
the laws of nature.