Queen honours firm

1:28pm Tuesday 6th May 2008

Blaenavon-based Super Rod has been honoured for its contribution to the electrical industry with The Queen's Award for Innovation.

The prestigious award reflects the impact Super Rod has had on the electrical contracting Industry, last year alone saving it more than nine million hours of wasted labour. The accolade follows the industry's own members voting Super Rod the Best Product of the Last 50 Years.

A year ago the company was acquired by Malcolm Duncan in a £500,000 deal, with lead funding from Corus subsidiary UK Steel Enterprise, which invested £200,000.

"We are obviously delighted to have been recognised in this way, but perhaps more importantly the Queen's Award is an opportunity to market and promote the brand around the world. We will now be aiming to maximise this with a major marketing push, around the world but particularly in the USA," said Mr Duncan.

David Hughes, of UK Steel Enterprise, said: "We are always looking for innovative Welsh companies which will benefit from strategic funding to help them develop and grow. Super Rod is the perfect example of how support at the right time can enable a company to take advantage of opportunities as they arise."

The product is essentially a system of connecting, flexible rods used to draw cabling through existing structures, removing the need for invasive work. The system works over considerable lengths, and an ever increasing array of tools enables it to deal with more and more tricky jobs in tight situations.

Attachments include lights and magnets for illumination and retrieving tools. Most recently the SuperCam inspection camera has been launched for looking inside inaccessible areas. Another innovation is the Glider - a whisk-like device which turns and helps the rods move over obstructions such as wooden roof beams or struts.

All products have been created by demand from their customers, giving them exactly what they need to get the job done.

"The beauty of Super Rod is that it saves an enormous amount of time and cost," said Mr Duncan. "It means that an installer often doesn't need to rip down a wall, a ceiling, or pull up a floor.

"We have estimated that this saving is as much as 60 per cent on a typical job, and that last year some nine million hours of fruitless labour were saved."

In particular, the product is of vital importance when working in historic and sensitive environments, where disruption to the fabric of a building has to be kept to a minimum.

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