The Company was founded by Herman Sanders in 1888 and after a Mr Rehders joined the business, established as Sanders, Rehders & Co. in London importing thermostaticsteam traps from Germany. It started to manufacture steam traps in United Kingdom under the Spiraxbrand name in 1932 and was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1959. In 1960 a range of self-acting pressure controls are introduced for the first time: then in 1963 it bought Drayton Controls, a control valve and instrumentation business. In 1990 the Company diversified in pump manufacturing in 1990 when it bought Watson-Marlow. It acquired the Jucker Industrial Division, an Italian controls business, in 1993, Bredel Hose Pumps, a business manufacturing high-pressure hose pumps, in 1996 and M&M International, an Italian piston actuated and solenoid valve business in 2001. In September 2005 it acquired Mitech Actuators & Controls and Proportional Control Technology, a pair of South African businesses making process controls. Then later that year it bought EMCO Flow Systems, a metering business. The company acquired Intervalf, a Turkish operation, for £2.8m in 2009. It completed a new facility in Shanghai, China in June 2010: the plant, designed as Spirax's regional headquarters, combines a factory, warehouse, and offices. In 2011 the Minister for UK Trade & Investment, Lord Green, opened the new Spirax Sarco facility in Saint Petersburg, Russia and in May 2012 the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg visited Spirax Sarco’s manufacturing facility in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. In May 2012 there was a shareholder revolt after Spirax-Sarco paid a former Executive Director compensation of £783,660; the company compounded the problem by failing to inform the markets of the shareholder revolt as required by the Listing Rules. Then in November 2012 the company bought Termodinámica, a distributor based in Santiago de Chile.
Operations
The company has two main operations:
Spirax-Sarco: provides engineered solutions for the design, maintenance and provision of efficient industrial and commercial steam systems
Watson-Marlow Fluid Technology Group: peristaltic pumps and associated fluid path technologies for the food, pharmaceutical, chemical and environmental industries
Spirax-Sarco has operating units in 60 countries across the world.
