Amazon Filters

FILTRATION EXPERTS OF THE HIGHEST ORDER

Amazon Filters is one of Europe’s leading independent manufacturers of high-quality liquid and gas filters for various process industries. Booming orders have put the company on a path for significant expansion and greater global reach in a highly competitive industry. Managing Director Neil Pizzey spoke to Andy Probert.

For more than 35 years, the experts at Amazon Filters have designed, manufactured, and installed filtration solutions that regularly go beyond client expectations. Reaping that detailed industry knowledge with high-quality accredited and innovative systems, the company now has a network encompassing over 40 countries and exports that account for 75% of its trade.

Its portfolio includes membrane and depth filter cartridges and capsules, stainless s teel filters, filter bags, carbon filters,

pleated filters, cartridge filter housings for liquid and gas applications (standard and custom design), and bespoke engineered projects.

The company’s solutions enjoy heavy demand in process industries ranging from food and beverage, energy, pharma and healthcare, chemicals and coatings, water, and OEMs for special filtration projects.

“We have a massive range of different configurations of filtration products, from standard to one-off bespoke designs,” said Neil Pizzey, Managing Director. “

A no-nonsense approach to critical safety, quality and long-life performance of our solutions has enabled us to experience robust growth in an industry otherwise dominated by global giants.”

Expansion and global reach

Neil’s engineer father, Mike, founded Amazon Filters in 1985, having amassed over 20 years of filtration experience. His aim was to provide creative solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing the process industry.

Today, it employs nearly 300 people at its head office, warehouse and 7,000sqm production hub in Camberley, Surrey, a satellite facility in Poland which is focused on R&D and is a world leader in the production of melt-blown filters, and a sales and distribution facility in Germany.

The company annually produces more than three million melt-blown filters, 750,000 pleated filters and 5,000 filter housings, ensuring that it is highly geared and flexible to meet the demands of clients worldwide.

Its in-built flexibility and ‘quick and able’ manufacturing capability has enabled Amazon Filters to maintain a sustainable 10% annual growth over the years. However, following robust growth in 2021 and 2022, the company is further scaling up operations, headcount and geographic reach.

A strengthened shipping and dispatch team has enabled it to better respond to customer demand, focus on its core markets of the UK and Europe, and strengthen its distribution networks in the Americas and Asia-Pacific.

With recent strategic hires in Malaysia and the US to spearhead growth, its next aim is to bolster export potential in Africa, where it already has several partners serving industries and clients in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa.

Strategic investments

Having bought out a minority stake of an outside private equity investor, the company has embarked on investing in

additional premises and equipment to boost its production capacity.

This began in late 2022, with the lease of an additional 650sqm warehouse and office on the same site as its main production centre. “This has allowed us to continue our growth plans while securing the business’s long-term future,” said Neil.

As part of a £1.5m capital investment programme, the new building allows Amazon Filters to relocate existing warehousing and create new production halls to underpin and increase its ‘quick and able’ manufacturing capacity.

“The new production halls will receive significant investment in state-of-the-art production line equipment to manufacture our pleated filters,” Neil explained. “As a result of these moves, we expect to double our production capacity for this type of filter and support our reach into international markets beyond the UK and Europe.”

Additionally, the company invested in handling and welding automation

equipment for the metal fabrication workshop and bringing in-house a variety of pressed and machined component parts. It has added more capacity with two semi-automated CNC mills.

“Continued capital expenditure on new machinery supports our policy of vertical integration in which manufacturing is increasingly done in-house with less

reliance on third parties or sub-contractors,” said Neil. “We have more control over what we do and how, why and when we do it.

“The aim is to support ‘quick and able’ manufacturing, the fast, flexible capacity to turn round customer orders, (including complex and bespoke projects) whatever the order size and wherever they originate in the world.

“All these investments underpin our ambitious strategy to grow by 25 to 30 per cent in the next four years across all industries and in all international territories.”

Sustainability drive

Upscaling performance has also contributed to new products, such as its SupaSep LGP; high-performance liquid-gas coalescer that supports

critical separation processes, and ASME BPE-compliant housings for use in bio-pharmaceuticals production.

“Because we make high specification filters, they typically last much longer compared to poor quality comparable products,” Neil continued. “That helps reduce waste, costs, and ensures effective performance without needing continual replacements. These can make real-life differences to our clients.

“Filtration is often a process problem solver and an enabler of new technologies. To illustrate that, Amazon Filters is heavily involved in new energy projects including hydrogen production programmes and carbon capture projects of global standing helping to resolve challenges and make them commercially and economically viable. So, we are always at the forefront of new technologies emerging.”

In one specific case, Amazon Filters was approached by a global supplier of filtration solutions for wind turbines to support its work on turbine gearboxes. The gearbox is the hardest working part of a turbine, but up to 50% of gearboxes fail in the first few years of operation, resulting in expensive repairs and unexpected downtime.

Amazon Filters developed a bespoke melt-down structure and, along with technical improvements, the client has not reported any filter damage during routine maintenance. “We’re thrilled to have helped extend the life of these gearboxes and save money on upkeep,” Neil added. “Our innovative technology, which we used to solve this problem, now has a European patent too.”

With pressure beginning to bear down on industries to improve environmental standards, the company’s filtration solutions help to optimise clients’ use of resources.

The company’s own sustainability impetus began with its long-standing ISO 14001 accreditation. Amazon Filters is focused on achieving the best sustainable practices relating to its own activities. These efforts – installation of solar panels, LED lighting, the upgrading of heavy compressors to low energy versions – all contribute to sustainability along with extensive recycling, use of renewable energies and reduction of waste.

“Using fewer products helps clients consume less materials,” said Neil. “We provide in-house expertise to design the filtration process so that it performs at the most efficient level. That is backed up by having products with longer-life potential than others. Put simply – using better filters equals using fewer of them, which means lower costs and less waste.

“Our value-added experience is secondto-none and is consistently maintained,” he concluded. “It’s a win-win scenario for us, our clients and the planet.”