About Kestrel
Fifty-two years on the same site
Started in 1974 by two draughtsmen who left a boiler maker to build fans properly. Employee-owned since 2019. Still in Templeborough, still 38 people, still answering the phone.
History
Where this came from
Alan Kestrel and Ronald Pyke were draughtsmen at a Sheffield boiler maker who spent most of 1973 arguing that the fans their employer bought in were badly matched to the plant they were bolted to. In February 1974 they rented a unit on Blackburn Way with a borrowed press brake and started building the fans they had been drawing.
The company stayed small deliberately for its first two decades, mostly doing process work for the steel trade. When that trade contracted in the 1980s we moved into building ventilation, which is now around 60% of turnover, and into tunnel and car park work from 2011.
Alan retired in 1998, Ronald in 2004. In 2019 the family shareholding was sold into an Employee Ownership Trust, which now holds 82%. In practical terms that means the people who quote your fan and the people who weld it have the same interest in it being right, and nobody here is under pressure from an owner who has never been on the shop floor.
- 1974
- Founded on Blackburn Way
- 82%
- Employee-owned since 2019
- 38
- People on site
- 14
- Years, average service
How we operate
Four things we will not move on
These have cost us orders. We would rather lose the order than the argument at commissioning.
We will query your duty
If the system resistance on the enquiry looks wrong we will ring and say so before quoting. Roughly one enquiry in seven gets that call. It occasionally annoys a consultant and it has never once turned out to be unnecessary.
We quote the fan we would fit
Not the cheapest thing that meets the words in the specification. Where those differ we quote both, price them separately, and explain what the difference buys over fifteen years of running.
The curve is measured
Issued against your order number from our own chamber, with the uncertainty band printed on it. When we found in 2026 that two published curves were optimistic, we reissued them and wrote to everyone holding a live quotation.
Spares outlive the design life
Everything built here since 1998 is still supported. That is a commercial cost and it is not under review.
People
Who you will deal with
Ruth Sedgeley — managing director. Joined as a project engineer in 2003, ran the tunnel side from 2013, took over in 2021.
Tomasz Brzezicki — engineering director. Twenty-two years of fan aerodynamics, eleven of them here. He is the one who will ring you about your system resistance.
Denise Okonkwo — works manager. Runs the floor, the welding procedures and the test schedule, and holds the ISO certifications.
Ian Fairhurst — service manager. Knows what is on the spares shelf without looking, which after twenty-six years is not surprising and is still useful.
Accreditation
Certificates held
- ISO 9001
- Quality management
- ISO 14001
- Environmental
- ISO 45001
- Health & safety
- EN 12101-3
- Smoke extract
- ATEX 2014/34/EU
- Explosive atmospheres
Next step
Send us the duty and we will send back a curve
Volume, static pressure, air temperature and what is in it. If you only have two of those, ring us and we will work out the rest.