How McMenon Engineering is unlocking new markets

Take a look at some of the good things that are happening at McMenon Engineering. Driven by a passion for sustainability and diversity, McMenon Engineering has secured an export guarantee from Lloyds Bank to support its global growth ambitions.

McMenon Engineering's story

Cumbria-based McMenon Engineering manufactures temperature and flow measurement instrumentation for a range of industries including the energy sector. 

As a global exporter to more than 60 countries, McMenon operates in a highly competitive market. New contracts often require performance guarantees, particularly when competing against larger companies.

“We are ambitious to grow,” says Anand Puthran, CEO of McMenon Engineering, “but often we found there was less appetite to work with companies of our size without a bank-backed guarantee.”

To ensure that this wasn’t a barrier to the business’ growth plans, Anand held an exploratory conversation with our relationship management team.

The Lloyds Bank team showed that they could deliver on our need for trade finance facilities and their belief in our business prompted us to switch banking facilities entirely.

Anand Puthran CEO, McMenon Engineering

Confidence in new markets

A few months into this new relationship and McMenon has already seen the benefits of the £2m trading line, says Anand. “We have used the facility for two large projects we have in the nuclear sector, and it has helped us manage some cross-border trade arrangements.”

Di Davies, Commercial Relationship Manager, Lloyds Bank, explains: “UK Export Finance provides guarantees to support trade lines. We then provide backing to those guarantees. It has allowed Anand to go out and negotiate terms of trade which may well be improved by the fact that he can provide guarantees of payment.”

Having the facility in place has certainly helped. It has opened the door to markets the business previously felt were out of reach, given that the nature of contracts in those countries required performance guarantees as standard.

“It’s allowing us to be even more ambitious,” says Anand. “The relationship we’ve developed has given me the confidence to open discussions for major contracts in the US for example.”

In addition to the direct benefits from having access to the trade facility, the backing is enabling McMenon to continue bolstering the values that are most important to it – from sustainability to diversity and inclusion. By underpinning the success of the business, McMenon can continue to invest in its people, for example through initiatives to encourage women into engineering and to create a more diverse workforce.

Changing working patterns to support employees’ mental health has helped with recruitment and retention and produced sustainability benefits too, with a nine-day fortnight pattern helping to cut emissions. It feeds into Anand’s passion for creating a business that doesn’t compromise on standards when it comes to the environment.

Investing in the future

“One of the major changes we’ve implemented is packaging,” he explains. “We’ve moved away from polystyrene to more environmentally friendly materials. We also invested a six-figure sum in changing all the lights in the company. We believe it’s important to invest in sustainability as a business, but also in research and development from a product perspective.”

For a business that’s traditionally manufactured products for the oil and gas sector, research and development and a desire to be part of the transition to net zero is important.

“Clean energy is part of our strategy and we’ve already moved from less than 5% of the business in this sector, to almost 15%. New innovations like our Emission FlowGenie, a continuous emissions monitoring system product, is also helping other businesses as part of their net-zero plans. And we’re already having conversations with Lloyds Bank about its own green financing options.”

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