A 153-year-old family-run brush-making business is on course to lift its turnover above its pre-recessionary levels.

Cottam Brush, which opened as a manufacturer of specialist brushes for the mining and shipbuilding industries, is making bigger strides into developing new products and has two launches in the New Year, with more to follow.

Ben Cottam, managing director of the firm, said: “We’ve spent the last couple of years in the depths of the recession really trying to put a lot more effort into production development.

“We’re starting to see that coming through now. We’ve got a couple of new products coming through at the start of the year.

“Traditionally, we’ve been a subcontracting type of business, developing products as customers demanded.

“But now we are trying to identify the needs of the market and are developing products and becoming more proactive.

“We knew we needed to do this. Probably the recession was the kick up the backside we needed.”

A new oil and gas pipeline cleaning brush has been developed by the Solutions wing of the business, which deals with specialised engineering products, and will be launched at a trade fair in Texas in February.

The painting and cleaning division will be selling a new range of paintbrushes from February.

The firm was founded in 1858 and Ben Cottam is founder Samuel Cottam’s great, great, great grandson, and the sixth generation of the family to head the firm.