This past week part of “The Monty Heat Treat News” Team has been honored to be able to spend some time with Vacuum & Atmosphere Services of Birmingham, UK (VAS for short). The firm is the largest in the UK when it comes to servicing the thermal heat treatment industry and appears to know virtually every single company involved in the industry. https://www.vacat.co.uk/ 

Founded in 2000 the management team consists of 3 directors who have spent their entire working lives in the industry;  Mike Long, Nick Houghton and Ian Scott. The company has over 35 employees who are able to provide pretty well anything when it comes to vacuum and atmosphere heat treating, service, installation, repair, spare parts-VAS even has a substantial offering of rebuilt equipment.

While the focus is on service, repair and install VAS also has new offerings which include datalogging, control systems and new furnaces through their long term relationship with Ipsen, Well worth mentioning also is the fact that the company has an interest in two other companies in the UK both dedicated to selling and servicing vacuum pumps, Vacuum Pump Services Ltd and VPSN Ltd.

Pre COVD sales were in excess of 5.4 million British pounds (roughly $7.5 million USD) and while the company like most others suffered a setback Mike Long was rather proud to say that they are now almost back at pre COVID levels. We had the chance to ask Mike how the pandemic had affected the company and he had this very interesting comment; “we were extremely fortunate that just prior to the onset of COVID, we hired a full time Quality, Health & Safety Director, a fellow by the name of Andy Nisbet. Andy’s experience in health and safety proved to be an enormous asset to us when navigating the new health and safety regulations and improving quality throughout the business”.

And what does the future hold? VAS is very much a family business, a business which includes Mike’s two sons Aaron and James who both work full time in the business. With their strong growth pattern, close family ties and an agreed succession plan in place, we expect the company to continue to grow and prosper in the future.

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