NORCO GROUP: Independent Electrical Energy Experts

An independently owned and managed group of companies with over 30 years industry experience operating internationally, throughout the United Kingdom, Europe and the Middle East, Norco is headquartered in Aberdeen. Founded in 1982, today Norco is known as the independent specialist supporting the demand for battery-backed systems across a wide range of applications.

“There are two main sides to the business now,” outlines MD Ryan Sharp, “the first being servicing operations of offshore assets for oil companies, meaning batteries, UPS systems and industrial chargers, and we perform this work for all major operators. That side is classed as our stand-by power arm, through which we also support NHS hospitals and telecommunications for a major mobile network provider. The other side, and originally the provider of our core business, is the traction aspect and encompasses industrial batteries, chargers, and associated equipment.

“Obviously, there is now less of a market for the original core business of what has come to be known as Norco, supplying batteries for the thousands of electric milk floats operating across the country, but it has been superseded by electric battery forklift trucks which now represents close to 50% of our business. We look after some of the main supermarket chains and their distribution centres, some of which have 500 trucks whose batteries last eight hours, and they are working 24-hour shifts; 1,500 batteries are required, and our staff are responsible for changing and maintaining them.”

INDEPENDENT, YET POWERFUL

“We have engineers from Southampton all the way up to Aberdeen,” Sharp says, with Norco’s size and expertise allowing it to offer personnel across the UK and abroad; this footprint is now bolstered by a presence in 22 countries, at last count, on the stand-by side of the business, including Africa, the Middle East and Kazakhstan. “I think rather than look to expand our physical footprint,” Sharp explains, “we will instead focus on the amount and breadth of work that we are able to carry out in the areas that we now cover.

“On the stand-by side,” Sharp continues of what makes Norco so unique, “we combine our experience and expertise in working on equipment produced by all of the main Industrial UPS manufacturers, with our strong repairs capability which allows us to support and ensure reliable operation of UPS systems which in many cases will no longer be supported by the OEM. It’s a major advantage for us over our competitors as most offshore assets will have multiple manufacturer equipment of varying ages which any one OEM would struggle to adequately maintain plus they will always have a vested interest in selling new equipment.”

Commercial Manager, Finbar Kelly furthers: “Although we do have partnership agreements with large original equipment manufacturers, we are still family-run and independent from any particular OEM, with no allegiance or hold to any single one. We are small enough a business to still care and afford clients direct access to the senior management team, yet big enough to be able to execute operations across nearly 30 countries.”

The family-run aspect is of critical importance to the overall ethos of Norco; while Sharp is keen to shy away from the spotlight and prefers to let the innovation and expertise of the company speak for itself, his recent stepping into the role of MD, a position vacated by his father, was clearly significant.

“My father started the company as a division of the old Norco Group in 1982, and ran it all the way up until the management buyout in 1991, then continuing until about five years ago when I took over, having been involved in the business since I was 16,” he reveals. “We are a young management team, all of us ambitious to see the company succeed and grow over the next five to 10 years and see exactly how far it can go.”

An in-house Research and Development team, fully staffed with six employees, now gives Norco not its own line of industrial power backup products but also enables the company to execute bespoke projects, vital to clients in the North Sea where some of their assets are ageing and sourcing replacement apparatus increasingly difficult. “We can come in and reverse-engineer a lot of the older, obsolete equipment in order to keep these rigs operational,” Sharp declares.

“Independence, flexibility, technology and scalability are the keys that distinguish our service offering as unique and, we believe unmatched, by any other UK business,” he condenses, and it is this heady combination that has kept Norco growing at such a rate even through the prevailing challenges of recent years.

“While there was something of a down period for a few months within the stand-by business during which we simply couldn’t get people offshore, we were extraordinarily lucky that our customers in the supermarket distribution centres kept us extremely busy. We certainly didn’t benefit from the pandemic, but in both of the toughest years we were still able to grow turnover, which speaks volumes to the business and its resilience and adaptability.”

TRANSITION FOCUSED

Norco’s primary business activities surround both batteries and uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, which are both centred around efficiency and extending product life as far as possible. “Where we come into our own,” Sharp says, “is in our maintenance of these products and ability to extend the life of our customers’ batteries and offer better warranties. This then extends their lifespan and prevents people from having to replace batteries, which are of course an absolutely vital element in any transition to green energy, so this is great for the environment.”

More recently, Norco has been delving into the world of photovoltaic (PV) solar power panel systems, opening up a new department to explore their application both domestically and commercially. “It is a natural fit for us into our company, with most of the hardware other than the PV panels themselves being things like inverters that we use on a daily basis anyway, and having completed one system this is definitely a department that we see growing in years to come.”

Hydrogen is an essential element of the global transition, and garnering more and more attention. “I believe that we are the only company in the UK with six years of experience performing operations and maintenance on a hydrogen site,” Sharp relays. “We are now expanding into hydrogen gensets – not necessarily something that we actively set out to become involved with, but which dovetailed perfectly with our existing hydrogen and backup power supply pursuits. People frequently approach us for this and we now have an agreement with a company in France to offer its products.”

UPS, hydrogen offerings and PV solar expertise – just some of the most exciting developments of the Norco business as it too builds towards the transition. “Oil and gas is going to be around for a while,” Kelly admits, “and it is very important for the transition that this is the case. An easy and effective transition that we have made recently is from our traditional task of sending workers offshore to oil rigs, to ensure that the power stays on – now we are doing the same to make sure that wind farms do not power down.”

As well as exploring new offerings and physically opening up new departments and segments, over the last five years arguably the key development at Norco has been setting its sights much further afield. “Five years ago, we were doing no business at all beyond the UK,” Sharp states. “Now, probably 20% of our turnover comes from outside, a lot of the time though links with our existing UK partners, and we see that as a really profitable opportunity when it comes to growing the business.

“Our core business remains very much the UK market, though, and our central focus will forever be in the North Sea. As decommissioning ramps up there is definitely a place for Norco to be heavily involved, and our expertise and experience in this genre of electrical systems can be of immense help to the decommissioning companies in otherwise time-consuming and enormously costly work. That said, this expansion overseas has come about purely through our willingness to take risks and to go to countries that previous management had eschewed, and is both pleasing and rife with potential.”