One of the UK’s leading water quality engineering firms is planning a major expansion of its services throughout the South of England.
Panton McLeod has targeted Kent as the next area to expand its environmentally-friendly services, which have been developed to help keep the country’s drinking water supplies at their highest quality levels.
The expansion plans come just weeks after the firm attended a “Water Efficiency in Kent” showcase in the region run by the Institute of Water, during which it demonstrated the innovative underwater robots it uses to clean and inspect water storage structures across the country.
The environmentally-friendly machines reduce wastage and are currently used to keep water quality at the highest levels in the Midlands and Scotland. Panton McLeod now plans to offer the technology throughout Kent and the surrounding region.
Paul Henderson, operations director with Panton McLeod, said: “We’re looking forward to expanding into the Kent region and offering our innovative technology so that customers enjoy the freshest water from their taps.
“We use cleaning robots that look a little like the Disney character Wall-E, and they are certainly as hard working – as they help to remove all of the sediment and debris that naturally builds up at the bottom of a large water storage tank, or ‘service reservoir’.
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“The beauty of our underwater division is that it reduces the need for these water facilities to be drained before they are inspected or cleaned. In the past you would have had to empty the whole tank and sent a team of people inside to check it for damage or debris, but now we just use one of the machines while the facility is on-line – which not only saves valuable time and money, but also helps save millions of litres of water every year.
“We already use this technology extensively in the Midlands and in Scotland and it has become an important part of our operations over the past few years. We’re now planning to offer it across the whole of Kent and the South of England, where we hope it will become a vital method of bringing environmentally-friendly, fresher water to customers throughout the region.”
Panton McLeod is one of the best-known names in the water industry, working with the biggest companies on the inspection, cleaning and repair of drinking water structures.
In recent years, the firm has carried out occasional cleaning, inspection and repair projects in the South of England – including disinfecting concrete tanks at a new reservoir in Cranbrook and using its robots to inspect water storage facilities at Denge and Paddlesworth for Veolia South East.
However, the latest expansion will be the first time that Panton McLeod has specifically targeted Kent and the South of England as a new region to grow its operations.
In the past decade, the firm has grown from its headquarters in Newtown St Boswells in the Scottish Borders, adding further offices in Nottingham and in the United States. The U.S. base in Denver, Colorado, is the hub for its North American division Panton McLeod Americas – which is currently revolutionising the way drinking water storage and treatment structures are cleaned and disinfected across the USA.
