Power Engineering - Combustion, Energy & Steam Specialists wins Queens Award for Enterprise

21 April 2004 � Orkney Island-based Combustion Energy and Steam Specialists Ltd (CESS) today announced it has won the Queen's Award for Enterprise.

CESS is the first Orkney firm and one of an elite group of companies to win this prestigious award for international trade, which puts it among the most successful of UK businesses. The announcement came on the Queen's personal birthday, 21 April, and a formal award ceremony is due to take place locally in Stromness, sometime in May.

Mike Craigie, managing director of CESS, came home to Orkney in 1995 to set up his company, after he'd travelled the world for the previous 17 years, and had an impressive career in the power-plant industry with Companies such as Solar Gas Turbines, John Brown Engineering, Howden, and Van der Horst (Singapore).

His Orkney Company, CESS Ltd, began actively trading in 1995 and has rapidly established itself as one of the worlds leading agents specialising in valuing, marketing, sourcing and relocation of power plant. "A lot of the emerging countries were desperate for power," observed Mike. "New equipment was expensive and usually on long delivery/lead times. I could see there was a huge potential market in "2nd hand" or surplus equipment, thereby finding a home for plant that was lying around because projects had been cancelled. I started to build up a database of what was where, and then it was mostly a matter of doing some supportive engineering and putting the equipment seller/owner and buyer in touch."

CESS presently employs 8 people and the founder members have recruited and trained their own enthusiastic young sales team. Together they travel the world to source, market, and appraise redundant or decommissioned power plant, including gas/steam turbines and diesels. "We work as a team - and we believe in helping each other reach our full potential." Additional staff are then employed on a contract basis internationally as required.

CESS handled over £12m ($21.5m) of equipment sales on a commission basis last year, and so far this year have already been responsible for the sale of power plant worth over £12.7 million. It is a very specialised business, earning commission fees for CESS, and in the past 3 years almost 90 per cent of the company's turnover has been from abroad, mainly China and the Middle and Far East.

It's in countries like these that Mike sees the firm's future, as well as nearer home. "Orkney and Stromness in particular are emerging as a centre for the research and development of renewable energy - an area that we are well positioned to support. It's the blue energy � the tidal power - that really interests me," says Mike.

"Orkney has just seen the establishment of EMEC - the European Marine Energy Test Centre. Whatever we develop here in the sea and tide off Orkney is applicable in rivers and coastlines in remote areas throughout the world. Inland Africa, Asia and South America - all of them have masses of rivers and the possibilities are endless."

CESS's most recent success was in the valuation, marketing, and sale of the 124 MW
Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) Plant at Fife Power (Cardenden, Scotland) to Scottish & Southern Energy plc for £12.3 M, on behalf of Ernst & Young,

Since 1995 CESS has also actively been promoting the development of the former Royal
Navy Base at Lyness in Scapa Flow as a recycling and decommissioning centre for North Sea oil rigs.

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