Advanced engineering products haven’t been getting pulses racing these last few years, but in the past few months something appears to be stirring. Take Fenner, one of those seemingly typical engineering companies tucked away on the London Stock Exchange that can track its history back to Britain’s Victorian heyday but is unlikely to be doing now what its founders originally envisaged.
More than 150 years ago, it was producing leather belting in Hull for power transmission purposes and for hoses. That became the production of conveyor belts, a business that Fenner continues — and it’s still making hoses. Its headquarters remains in East Yorkshire.
Fenner’s problem has been that its belts, hoses and seals have been largely for the mining and energy industries, which have