Surface Generation stays afloat with space-age tech

“It was all in place bar the ink on the paper, but the company was taken over and as a result we almost went bust. I probably should have shut up shop then, but I ploughed on,” says Halford, whose baby daughter was born a month after the contract fell through.

“I paid the entrepreneur’s price in those days,” he says, “and spent six months away from home trying to save the business.

“A recession is just about confidence and everyone in our sectors [consumer electricals, aerospace and defence and aviation] pulled in their horns and made do with the equipment they had,” he says. “Projects got delayed by six months, which might work for a multinational company with cash reserves, but not for a small business.”

Bailed out by its backers, technology firm Oxford Instruments, the 20-strong workforce at Surface Generation continued to improve its technologies and secure more patents, refining the capital intensive composite process to make it more efficient.

“Everyone wants to be slimmer – tablets get ever- lighter, cars become more energy efficient and planes need to do more miles per unit of fuel aviation,” he says. “So there was always light at the end of the tunnel as we were positioning ourselves to tap into the growing desire for manufacturers to conserve energy, reduce pollution and lower costs, while speeding up mass production of equipment and increasing use of lightweight composites, such as carbon fibre, in the aviation and automotive industries.”

In fact, in 2010 global demand for carbon fibre was around 43,758 tonnes. By 2020 it is expected to be between 240,000m tonnes and 342,000m tonnes, driven in some respects by the burgeoning middle classes in Asia and their love of consumer electronics.

“By precisely controlling temperatures up to 1,000 [degrees C], powered by only using air heating and cooling, we have produced the first digital molding environment to mass produce composites in an energy efficient way,” he explains. And using such high heats has cut 95pc of the cycle time and energy savings of 90pc for his clients.

Halford spent £7m in research and development and patents and is now well positioned for the global surge in the demand of carbon fibre.

Surface Generation’s annual revenue has risen from £600,000 in 2013 to £2m this year and generates 90pc of this turnover from exports.

In April he signed a five-year deal with Japanese engineering giant, IHI Corporation, to mass produce lightweight jet engine parts for a major single aisle commercial aircraft program.

The British company now has a partner in Taiwan and is opening demonstration centres on the west and east coast of the US. Clients include Boeing and the Warwick Manufacturing Group.

“We’re playing with the big boys now out in Asia,” says Halford, 41, who spends much of his time flying to trade shows. “But Rutland is very much part of my sales pitch. We bike around Rutland Water with clients and take them to a 1,000-year-old local pub.”

The picturesque spot, better known for its leisure trade than engineering, is also part of his recruitment strategy.

In the Midlands, Halford is competing against Rolls-Royce and Jaguar Land Rover to attract talent.

“It’s hard to recruit graduates and engineers therefore we offer them something different. We have a very relaxed working environment where we look for aptitude and attitude over experience. I have hired doll house makers and taxi drivers. We’re a motley crew but the right people can be trained,” he continues. “We have super fast broadband out in the middle of the country and we’re also close to the Cambridge science hub.”

Now preoccupied with how to use the same methodology, but with glass, it was his vision that enabled him to win funding from private investors in Oxford and London, using business angels networks and winning support from Nesta – a charitable organisation that supplies grants to innovative science projects.

“I needed serious money behind me to develop our intellectual property,” he says.

And he did it with no support from the banks.

The farmer’s son, who grew up calculating the price of a fleet of tractors, said: “My father always used to say the bank will lend you an umbrella when its summer. The lack of finance for SMEs is not a new problem but with the alternative financing that is now on offer there is a generation of people like me who are not going to use banks – they will become irrelevant for small and medium sized businesses.”

Halford claims this year’s Budget was “too little too late” to make a difference for UK manufacturers on the global stage in emerging sectors.

“It will predominately support existing businesses and do little to provide greater access to funding, safeguard intellectual property or tackle the country’s skills shortage for the next generation of high growth technology firms.”

Throughout the downturn, the biggest lesson Halford says he learnt was becoming comfortable with making a mistake, and not repeating it.

But would he do it all again?

“Surface Generation is just my first project,” he says. “This won’t be the only thing I do.”

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