Business sets sail for China

May 12 2009 by Iain Laing, The Journal

A FAMILY business is sweeping into China and has revealed further plans to grow its North East base.

Cottam Brush, which marked its 150th anniversary last year, has appointed Beijing Pipeline Science & Technology as its sales agent to target the burgeoning Chinese oil and gas industry.

Managing director Ben Cottam started looking seriously at China late last year and has made a number of trips across to assess the market, with help from the Government’s UK Trade & Investment.

Mr Cottam said: “We’re specifically looking at the oil and gas industry, in particular the pipeline maintenance market.

“I thought we haven’t really got a lot to lose and we got a very positive reaction to the business and our products. We are now at the stage of turning that good intent into sales orders, we’re pretty excited by it.

“The North American market is probably the biggest for us but we are now looking at China as getting pretty close.”