2024 marks the 20th anniversary of pump company Börger establishing what has become a very successful UK operation. From day-one, the company in the United Kingdom and Ireland has been led by one David Brown.
Water Magazine thought it timely to put him in the Mastermind chair and ask some questions.
WM: How did you come to be at Börger, setting up the UK subsidiary?
DB: I was working in sales for a large compressor and pneumatics company, but when they made what I thought was a very unwise change in senior personnel, I believed it was time to get out.
I saw a really interesting job in The Daily Telegraph for a sales engineer, but it asked for some ‘basic German language skills.’
WM: Sprechen Sie Deutch, Herr Brown?
DB: Well, no, but I thought, stuff it, I’ll apply anyway – and before I knew it, I was being interviewed by Alois and Anne Börger at Birmingham Airport, and was then invited to Germany to make a presentation. And as they say, the rest is history.
WM: And what happened to the compressor company?
DB: They went out of business!
WM: So what were the early days like for Börger UK?
DB: Crowded! Hit the ground running with sales to customers in the industrial sector, and in no time at all was having an extension built at home as I’d outgrown the dining room table and soon had two colleagues working with me. Admittedly I was out on the road a lot, all over the country, but three of us, plus visitors trying to get in and out of the house by walking over wooden sleepers amid all the builder’s mess and noise wasn’t that peaceful! Helen Lippitt began working for Börger UK in 2009, and she’s still mad enough to be working with me now, in a somewhat more spacious environment! She’s great to work with, and a big positive part of the Börger UK story.
WM: Although the industrial sales were going well, getting a foothold in the water/wastewater industry must have been an important goal?
DB: Yes – we wanted the larger orders to sustain our business, and knew that we had a good product to sell.
WM: When did you manage to really break through into the industry?
DB: The most significant moment was back in 2006 when I went to see Thames Water at Mogden. I put the cutaway model of my demo Börger pump on the table when I arrived, but after a long journey had to make a dash for the loo before we could start the meeting. When I came back, the guys from Thames said: ‘How long have you got? Do you want to grab your high-viz from your car? We’ve got some pump jobs for you to look at.’
Unbeknownst to me, they’d taken the Börger model apart and put it back together again before I’d got back to the meeting room!
WM: You didn’t get stuck in the loo did you!?
DB: No, thank goodness. The guys from Thames just loved the fact that our Rotary Lobe Pump was so simple, and that it had ‘Maintenance-In-Place design’, so would be very easy to service. I put together the quotes that evening on the laptop in my humble hotel room. We won three of the four contracts that were on offer; one of the orders being for 16 pumps, so that really was our big breakthrough, which put us on an even more solid footing.
WM: And progress later into another industry too?
DB: Yes with biogas, for about the past 10 years. We now sell lots of separators, feeders and pumps to AD sites, from farms to food-waste-to energy plants, and of course, pumps & macerators to the water industry.
WM: After these past 20 years David, what keeps you going and wanting to keep taking Börger forward?
DB: For me, the wide variety of applications always makes it interesting and challenging, so every day is different.
WM: And the future for Börger and Börger UK?
DB: Naturally, I’d like to add some more millions to the turnover – wouldn’t we all (!) – but two decades on I still see that it’s all to play for. Börger is a very strong, family-run company with great products. The business has come a long, long way since it started in 1975, selling all over the world with eight firmly established subsidiaries. I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved since starting with a blank order book back in 2004, and I know we can continue to grow.
WM: Thank you, David. That’s 10 out of 10, with no passes!
