About

The Scott brothers, Ernest & George, were amongst the earliest pioneers of process plant manufacturing, specialising in evaporators for the soap & glycerine industry in the 1800s.

In the early 1900s, the Scott Company was taken over and absorbed into the Balfour Group. In the 1950s, Balfour was subsequently taken over by the Pfaudler Corporation of the U.S., which was, in turn, in the early 1980s, taken over by a major world-wide industrial conglomerate owned by Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.  Shortly afterwards, the conglomerate was broken up and a local Fife company, Alval Engineering, bought all the thin film evaporator business, the tubular evaporator business and the drying business from the Balfour sell-out.

Around the same time, some ex-Balfour employees formed a new company, The Geo. Scott Company, to specialise in evaporator and process plant design.  This company acted as a major sub-contractor to Alval in the design of many of the evaporators and dryers sold, manufactured and installed by Alval throughout the world.

In 1995, Alval ceased manufacture, and top management personnel of both Alval and the Geo. Scott Company decided to set up a fresh company which would concentrate on process design and engineering, and would team up with a specialist manufacturer for the execution of contracts.  This was considered to be a more cost effective and efficient method of doing business for both the company and the customer.

This new company, formally incorporated in 1996 and called Scott Process Technology Ltd.,  combines the modern product lines developed from the original Balfour/Scott brothers manufacturing range of evaporators & dryers with the current-day expertise of the key management and chemical/mechanical design engineering personnel of Alval and the Geo. Scott Company.  In so doing, the history of the original company founded back in 1834 and its continuation were restored.

Since its start, SPT has been involved with major projects, for example:

• British Steel for the evaporation of electrolyte from a nickel plating line using a falling film mechanical vapour recompression (FF.MVR) evaporator
• Cheil Chemicals, South Korea, for evaporator plant to process fertilizers.
• Thiokol Corporation of Salt Lake City (Utah, US) for the evaporation and crystallisation of recovered rocket fuel from the Minute-Man missiles and NASA space shuttle booster rockets
• Installation of turnkey alcohol distillery in Singapore
• Development and management of project for an offshore oil company in Aberdeen for the clean-up treatment of oily drill cuttings, and development of the process application for their by-products as a profitable off-shoot for the company.
• Design and installation of an acetone pumping station for a gas company on Humber-side.
• Extensive design, consultancy, supply and project management contracts for distillery plant in Northern and Republic of Ireland – Middleton and Bushmills Distilleries
• Design and installation of evaporators, effluent treatment and distillation equipment for Lothian Chemical Co., and subsequently Shanks
• Complete turnkey factory and plant for conversion of dates into date syrup and date flake powder in Oman.
• Supply of solvent scrubber and liquid/liquid extraction process for Bluestar Chemicals in China at their new carbon fibre pre-curser plant.
• Complete turnkey supply of equipment for the Cornish Sea Salt Company Ltd in St.Keverne in Cornwall
• Complete turnkey supply of a new NORM consolidation plant for Scotoil Services in Aberdeen.
• The design, supply, installation and commissioning of several methanol evaporators for purification of pharmaceutical grade Omega-3 oils for BASF in Lewis, Outer Hebrides

More recently, SPT have been involved in the complete turnkey supply of a new chlorophyll extraction plant for British Chlorophyll Co Ltd in Lincoln and the supply of a brand new water treatment and heavy metals removal system at Scotoil in Aberdeen. More details of these projects can be found in the case history section.

SPT are a partner in Lexington-Scott LLP of Dallas, who in turn totally own Consolidated Fabricators Inc., an ASME VIII qualified manufacturing facility in Dallas, Texas, where most of the manufacture and supply of process plant for the US market is carried out in accordance with the design and quotation structures provided by SPT here in the UK.

SPT have all their manufacturing and installation work done for the UK & overseas markets by specialist fabricators and process plant builders in the UK.

By keeping the technical side separate from the fabrication side, SPT can concentrate on process problems and project management whilst getting very competitive fabrication costs. This generally means that clients can get a very competitive cost for a complete project.

The arrangement gives SPT great flexibility in that contracts from as little as £10,000 up to £3 million have been handled.  SPT does, however, have their own engineering works where plant can be assembled and partially tested prior to shipment.

SPT have a range of pilot plant facilities including a pilot distillation column,  wiped film evaporator and mixers & driers.  A full laboratory for the testing of materials and small scale experiments is part of the workshop.  These facilities allow SPT to test clients’ materials and to develop and prove technical solutions.