RAF Contract

Wessington Cryogenics Ltd has recently won a prestige order worth over £1,000,000 to supply cryogenic tanks to the RAF. The order was won against stiff competition and notched up another success for a small company, which has grown phenomenally in the past few years.

A vital ingredient in flying is of course the oxygen for the pilots to breathe at high altitudes, this is supplied by on-board liquid oxygen cylinders, in much the same way as round the world balloonists have created new records using Wessington liquid oxygen cylinders.

For the topping up of this liquid oxygen to the fighters on the ground, the RAF will now use Wessington mobile cryogenic vessels which are specially designed for harsh conditions in this country and abroad, in both desert and jungle combat conditions. Painted dark green, the first tanks rolled off the assembly line a few weeks ago to begin their life in the armed services, a tribute to the skills of Wessington engineers and technicians.

These first four vessels are already destined for service in the bleak military base in the Falklands.

A specific feature of the vessels is their versatility. They are designed to be quickly trundled up the ramp on to a Hercules transport plane and flown anywhere in the world at short notice.

Especially pleased is the Engineering Manager in charge of this exciting project, Paul Rowe who has worked very closely with MOD staff in satisfying the exacting specification and designing this versatile world beating mobile liquid oxygen vessel.

"It’s an important contract to have won because it underlines that as well as being competitive on price and quality, we design and manufacture an excellent product. We listened to exactly what the engineers and end users of this equipment wanted and engineered the final product to meet their specific requirements. One feature is that it only takes a few minutes to carry out routine maintenance on certain parts of our vessel – the problem with older equipment was that the same maintenance took several hours to achieve."