About Halifax Fan

History of Halifax Fan

history Established in 1965 to serve local industry, Halifax Fan Limited now supplies most industries throughout the world from its manufacturing sites at Brighouse, Yorkshire and Shenzhen, China. Over 60% of production is exported.

An ongoing programme of investment ensures that Halifax Fan maintains its position as a leader in its field through the installation of sophisticated CAD/CAM systems and the most technologically advanced manufacturing equipment.

Halifax Fan also invests heavily in the training and development of its staff and a planned apprentice training scheme ensures not only a constant supply of highly skilled production staff but also a strong and very experienced engineering and management team. Many of today's senior personnel originally joined the company as apprentices or in other junior positions.

From the very beginning every one of Halifax Fan's products has been designed, developed and built in its factory and everything originates from the company's own designs. All prototype fans are tested and rated to BS848 Part 1 and proven designs are also regularly monitored through systematic audit testing and re-assessment to ensure compliance with our registration to BS EN ISO 9001 and current industry, national and international standards and legislation. All Halifax Fans carry the CE Mark.

Providing the very highest quality product and customer service has always been of prime importance and a key factor maintaining Halifax Fan's position at the forefront of fan technology.

Halifax Fan enjoys an excellent reputation world-wide and the company's extensive customer list represents a comprehensive range of market sectors and applications.

Our Team

Malcolm Staff - Managing Director

Malcolm Staff joined Halifax Fan in 2003, after a successful career at Danfoss drives as their Sales and Marketing Director. Malcolm has transformed the turnover at Halifax Fan through strong business strategies backed up with continuous investment in people and technology.

As our figure head; Malcolm's role at Halifax Fan is to co-ordinate all our departments and ensure the smooth, efficient running of Halifax Fan UK, China and Thailand.

Charles Halstead - Technical Director

Charles joined Halifax Fan over 20 years ago as an apprentice draughtsman. Charles attended Bradford university where he gained his engineering degree. Working in Research and Development, audit testing and software programming, Charles worked his way through the ranks at Halifax Fan to become one of the worlds most experienced fan engineers. Charles is also a respected industry spokesman, often called upon by local universities for advice on modern industrial practices. Charles has the role of Chief Engineer and technical adviser, overseeing all operations at Halifax Fan.

Barry Thomas - Chief Engineer / Drawing Office Manager

Barry Thomas is a time served chartered engineer educated at Manchester University. He was recently elected a Fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers.

Barry has over 35 years mechanical engineering experience developing high performance, cost effective and robust solutions. As Chief Engineer, he is responsible for maintaining our high design standards and for developing our products for the future.

Wayne McKenna - Technical Sales Engineer

Wayne originally served his time at Halifax Fan as a sheet metal apprentice. After seven years working in all departments, Wayne moved into the office, where he was later sent to Huddersfield University for further education. Wayne's main role at Halifax Fan is selecting fans and preparing tenders as an internal sales engineer. Another role Wayne undertakes is Research and Development work in the form of a Thermal Test rig, originally designed by Wayne at university. Wayne also looks after our website.

Graeme Mount - Technical Sales Engineer / Dedicated Nuclear Projects

Graeme Mount is an established engineer at Halifax fan. He originally served his apprenticeship at Hartley and Sugden Boiler Makers as a heavy-gauge fabricator. Graeme moved to Halifax fan as a skilled engineer where he fabricated our fan cases. He later spent many years in our drawing office as a draughtsman. Using all his previous fan knowledge Graeme is now one of our dedicated sales team.

Leigh Prescott - Technical Field Sales Engineer

Leigh is an external technical sales engineer with over 20 years fan industry experience.  Based from his home in Manchester, Leigh is tasked with servicing existing customers and new business development throughout the UK.

Seb Rowe-Trainee Internal Sales Engineer

Seb Rowe joined the company in 2011 as a document controller to support the project engineers with documentation, after 6 months learning about the company he was given the opportunity join the sales team as a trainee. He is learning more and more each day and looking forward to expanding his knowledge in the years to come.

Dr Ian Parker - Research & Development / Project Draughtsman

Ian is a very talented engineer who has a passion for science and physics. Ian joined Halifax fan as a graduate after attaining a B.Eng and a Ph.D from Bradford University. His abilities have made him a core member of our team. Ian's role at Halifax Fan is a Project Engineer/Draughtsman, he carries out regular audit tests on our fan ranges allowing us to comply with BS848 Part 1, 1980. Another role carried out by Ian is FEA (Finite Element Analysis) on our arduous applications. 

Neil Baker - Spares and Repairs

Neil Baker is another Halifax Fan apprenticed-trained engineer, who has also worked in all areas of the company, he is now the longest serving original Halifax Fan apprentice meaning he knows our company better than anyone. As Chief Inspector, Neil oversaw and inspects all of our products and their components, in all stages of manufacture. He also makes regular trips to our Chinese facility where he consults on quality control and the general manufacturing process. Niels new role is co-ordinating all the spare parts and refurbishment jobs

Andy Welbourne - Quality Control

Andy is one of our longest serving draughtsmen; he is responsible for our company quality control. Andy oversees all our Q.C. aspects ensuring we maintain our excellent standards keeping us a ISO9001 company

Paul Collins - Logistics

Paul Collins works alongside Ian Crum dealing with our suppliers, freight forwarders, foremen, inspectors, and customers. Paul started at Halifax Fan well over twenty years ago as an apprentice sheet metal worker; he has since worked as a mechanical fitter before moving up to his currant role.

Drawing Office

Our Drawing office is the central hub of our fan knowledge; our highly skilled draughtsmen design and refine our fans to give the best performance, highest efficiency and longevity. Our drawing office uses the very latest 3D modelling software combined with top of the range Finite Element Analysis programmes. As leaders in fan technology we also utilise many of our own programmes developed by our own expert programmers. Halifax fans twelve draughtsmen have either worked at Halifax fan from being apprentices or come to us from smaller fan companies. Every draughtsman has had a collage or university education.

Accounts Department

At Halifax we have a small but very efficient accounts department. Our UK accounts are headed by Asad Khan the Finance controller

Admin Team

We have a growing admin team that deals with all our communications, computers, servers, and human resources.

Purchasing

Our main buyer is Kevin Garbut, Kevin is a qualified purchaser. Our motors are co-ordinated and ordered by Toni Tang

Documentation

With evermore stringent specifications and the growing need for documentation we now have a dedicated Documents controller;  Joe Clark, Joe joined Halifax in 2012, he has worked in document control for many years in the construction and engineering sectors.

Fan Case Department

Our skilled fan case department is manned by eight, City and Guilds qualified, experienced sheet metal workers. We also have a laser operator

Impeller Department

Our four impeller fabricators are experts in building critical rotating equipment, where only the best will do. Each rotor is handmade and welded by our impellermen

Welders

All our five welders are coded for all the common and some exotic engineering steels, they use our TAG, MAG, & MMA machines.

Inlet Cone Department

Our inlet cones are one of the most complicated components we make, each cone is hand formed by our Cone man.

Fitting Department

Our seven strong fitting team are all experienced mechanical, fabrication engineers. Some of whom also work on site. We also have an experienced painter who can apply wet, powdercoating, and multl-layer chemical / marine finishes. All our fitting engineers are experienced at performing trim-balancing, mechanical run tests, vibration analysis, laser coupling alignment, diagnostics, refurbishments etc.