On the 15th of October 2020, Blackrow Group is proud to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its incorporation.

Started in 1979 by three partners using a garage on Holles Street, then incorporated in 1980 when director Jim Leahy joined Blackrow engineering, Blackrow has been a local Grimsby success story.

Humble beginnings

As the longest-serving person at Blackrow, Jim said “it was a very small lean-to but we achieved a lot in there. We even made things in the yard area.”

Growing quickly Blackrow soon moved from Holles Street to Armstrong Street, then extending the premises before finally moving to the South Humberside Industrial Estate where Blackrow’s head office is still located today.

On the fast growth of Blackrow, Jim commented “when we first started off we were all sheet metal workers in a small but very profitable field. But obviously, as we moved into bigger premises we were able to take on larger projects and get other sectors into the business.”

Grimsby’s own success story

40 years on, Blackrow now has multiple facilities across the country with an array of global projects in places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Turkey, Italy, Australia, and an impressive list of blue-chip clientele.

Serving a whole host of sectors from defence and power generation to food and FMCG, the company now boasts state of the art facilities and a multi-million-pound turnover. The team has now grown from the original three founders to an impressive 200+ staff. Just last year a £1M investment went into developing the facilities further, with additions such as the innovative NitroCube increasing the company’s ability to meet demand.

Looking to the future

In the past Blackrow as a business has relied heavily on word of mouth to help the business grow, and over the last four decades, it has built an undeniable reputation within the engineering industry and across the whole business world for its impressive facilities, top-quality site installations and unmatched offering of products and skills.

With big aspirations, we have identified the need to go beyond just word-of-mouth and have developed an extensive sales and marketing strategy, consolidating our success in the food sector and developing strategies to gain market share in emerging sectors such as pharmaceuticals.

The secret of our success

We asked our Directors for their thoughts on why Blackrow has been so successful over the last 40 years.

“Two things – our people and their quality.”