Back Ebac

[threegee]

It's going on forty years since I learned about Ebac, and then drove down to darkest Co. Durham to buy one of their "building driers" to solve a humidity problem in a small Bedlington industrial project.  In fact a short while before, and on a phone call through then yellow pages, we'd hired one of their dehumidifiers .  Dressed in local blue finnegans hammerite paint it wasn't terribly efficient, but it proved we had a problem and that we needed one permanently.

 

When we got to Newton Aycliffe we were shown into a vast new industrial unit with little in it, but there was a short row of brand new two-tone beige driers that had just been produced. They were more angular, more "modern", and there was obviously a process of continuous improvement going on. Out came the cheque book and the machine we returned with to Bedlington ran completely unmaintained for decades in various roles. Over the years It must have pulled enough water out of the air to fill a large swimming pool!

 

That's pretty much all I knew about Ebac - they were North East; they were progressive; they produced good gear, they were approachable, and they supplied local builders - until.. I turned the TV on last year.  Lo and behold there was ex-CBI supremo Digby Jones called in to put Ebac back on the straight and narrow!  It seems the founder had died and left the whole show to the key workers as a worker's cooperative. Wow, this was suddenly interesting stuff!

 

It got even more interesting when it became clear that they'd bought a bust Scottish freezer manufacturer from a liquidator on the telephone for a megasum, and had never actually eye-balled what they'd contracted to pay for!  Their intention was to move the production facilities to the North East and resume freezer production. Where they intended to do this looked remarkably like the empty factory floor I'd visited nigh on forty years before - except, the roof now leaked badly, evidenced by large pools of water!

 

As you might imagine Digby Jones shook his head and grumbled at the lack of "due diligence", overconfidence, and dearth of business nouce. Despite a return months later the program ended inconclusively.  Ever-mounting problems meant Ebac still hadn't produced a single freezer, and the original business plan had become a joke!

 

One thing I did pick up from the program was that they'd already moved mass market - into domestic dehumidifiers - and were producing a pretty advanced one in a moulded housing.  In the last couple of weeks we've just bought one of the same, but I can't rate it just yet as it hasn't arrived at the final destination.

 

But... the real purpose of this post is to highlight the hot news that this Wednesday Ebac produced the very first washing machine on their production line. The ambitious plan is to take 10% of the UK washing machine market, and add another 150 North East jobs in the process.  I believe they will do just that!  Keep it up Ebac, you are a shining example of what home grown North East enterprise can achieve when it sheds the crippling state-dependency mindset!