In the spotlight: Ivor Searle

Ivor Searle, which has remanufactured engines for more than 60 years, is proud of its green credentials.

Each engine it remanufactures uses around 90% of the donor unit, eliminating the need to use raw materials as well as many of the chemicals used in the production process.

“Few understand the benefits of remanufacture to the environment, but numerous reports state that it is the ultimate form of recycling,” says Robert Waring, Ivor Searle’s Fleet Solutions business development manager.

One of these reports came from Shanghai Jiatong University which found that remanufacturing an engine can save 55kg of steel and 8.3kg of aluminium along with reducing CO2 emissions by 565kg, carbon monoxide by 6.09kg, nitrogen dioxide by 1.01kg and sulphur dioxide by 3.985kg.
Those benefits – in addition to the cost savings – have been available to fleets since 2002 when Ivor Searle first began supplying engines to the corporate market. In 2006 it launched Fleet Solutions and subsequently expanded the range of remanufactured parts.

Its vehicle age profile typically starts at around five years, making vans a big growth opportunity as fleets extend their operating cycles. Ivor Searle already counts 40 of the FN50 leasing companies among its customers.

Waring makes a clear distinction between remanufacturing and recycling, which is starting to grow in popularity for common, non-structural parts.

“Recycling has been a most welcome development within the automotive industry in recent years,” he says.

“Remanufacturing, however, has been in existence for a considerable time and has a major benefit over recycling: it makes a much greater economic contribution per unit in that it ‘recaptures’ much of the value added (the cost of labour, energy and manufacturing processes added to the basic raw material cost) of the original product.

“A lot of our fleet customers, particularly in the public sector, are very interested in the environmental benefits”
Robert Waring, Ivor Searle

The environmental focus runs deep throughout Ivor Searle.All scrap metal in disposed of in an environmentally-friendly way. Even the steel cradles used for transporting engines to customers are reuseable.

But remanufacturing is not just about the environment; there is a cost benefit too – a remanufactured engine, for example, typically costs 15% less than a new unit.
The company was founded in 1946 by agricultural engineer Ivor Searle as an engine reconditioning business to repair farm vehicles.

Over the years it evolved to cater for all vehicles, from motorcycles to lorries, before moving to a purpose-built engine remanufacturing facility in Soham – its current home – in 1981.

The company also expanded into remanufactured turbochargers and gearboxes as well as growing its original core business of engines and cylinder heads. Following a large investment in a purpose-built factory adjacent to the main factory, it now offers remanufactured engines, gearboxes, turbochargers and cylinder heads, in addition to related fuel injection equipment and associated components.

Turbochargers and gearboxes have been a rapid growth area, in turn enabling Ivor Searle to build a modern facility which now enables all products to be manufactured under one roof.
This means the company can absorb any major expansion in business with even more quality control measures, says Waring.

“It is very easy to take on more than you can handle and we didn’t want to become a jack of all trades and master of none, so we had to get our quality right and training programmes in place before we took on the gearbox work ourselves.

“Probably our biggest growth area is gearboxes, both off the shelf and when we rebuild them.”

David Eszenyi, business operations director, adds: “We now manufacture all our product in-house as we think it is more quality oriented with new systems being implemented.
“We’ve recently achieved ISO 9001 quality standard so our customers can see how important quality is to us.”

All remanufactured engines, built to British Standard AU 257 2002, and gearboxes come with a 12-month unlimited mileage warranty, while turbochargers come with a two-year unlimited mileage warranty.

Ivor Searle also offers engine rebuilds. It currently stocks up to 500 engines, covering the majority of vehicle manufacturers and models, as well as hundreds of gearboxes,
turbochargers and cylinder heads. It also uses the Epyx 1 Link service.

“Fleet Solutions exists to look after fleet requirements so it has its own specialist team and key performance indicators,” says Waring. “Everything we have in Fleet Solutions is geared to getting orders out to customers quickly; we ensure next-day delivery of stock items.