Company History

The name Wallwin comes from its founder, Josiah Mower Wallwin who moved to Warwick, England just before the First World War and started the Company at the Saltisford Ironworks.

The initial company activities were: –

Involved mainly in the clothing industry.

Produced cloth turning machines.

Patented design for gas iron.

Patented design for dispensing and packaging of fluids in wax coated containers.

Shell cap manufacture during 1914-18 war.

In 1920 Engineer Wheeler joined the company and was responsible for developing the ‘S’ blade impeller – probably one of the best unchokable impellers ever designed and still used today in the old range of conventional pumps.

In 1926 Wallwin Pumps was formed as a pump company with a range of solids handling pumps and development continued up until recent years.

In 1951 Josiah Wallwin died and the business was sold to the Blunt family of Warwick.

During the 50’ and 60’s all of the pumps sold were of the conventional type, either vertically shaft driven, horizontally mounted direct on a baseplate and in later years the motor was mounted directly on to the pump and close coupled.

These were sold to local councils who provided the network sewage system by means of a number of in-line pumping stations. These were of the dry well arrangement with the pumps receiving the media from an adjacent wet well and many still exist today.

Wallwin soon became the market leader in the UK and in 1966 they acquired Electrical Systems Limited (ESL) and moved them to the Warwick factory to enable Wallwin to have an “in house” electrical control panel capability.

In 1968 Wallwin Pumps and ESL were sold to the Moss Engineering Group and sales continued to grow with the company providing the complete package from design through to installation.

In 1980 another Moss Engineering Group company, Wm E Farrer Ltd was moved to Warwick to combine with Wallwin to form Farrer Wallwin International Ltd, while ESL remained separate in the original Wallwin factory.

Export sales then grew with the majority of units being sold in to the developing Middle East. During the 80’s there was increased pressure from European competitors with the development of Submersible pumps for wastewater/sewage applications. To compete in this market, Wallwin formed an agreement with Robot Pumps and together produced a horizontal submersible pump sold under license as a ‘Wallwin Robot’. This was then developed into a vertical unit in line with the main competitors.

In 1982 the Biwater Group acquired Farrer Wallwin and ESL to form Biwater Pumps and Control Systems. Farrer Sewage Ltd was soon dropped in favour of Biwater’s own Sewage Treatment Company, Biwater Treatment, Heywood.

During the 80’s Biwater had great success in the UK and around the world (especially Hong Kong) and developed their own design of Submersible pumps, which is still the basis of the current range (prior to GR acquisition). Also during this time the UK had formed Water Authorities to look after all aspects of clean water provision and treatment of wastewater/sewage. Biwater Pumps moved out of Warwick after many years and joined Biwater Penstocks and Hydro Power in the West Midlands.

During the late 90’s all of the pumping stations under control of the local council authorities were taken over by the Water Authorities and Water Companies were created. This reduced the number of outlets for the sales of Wallwin Pumps and where these Water Companies appointed Frameworks with other suppliers it meant that Wallwin would be “shut out” for 3 to 5 years

Due to growing pressure from the Governing body OFWAT to reduce costs, the UK Water Authorities looked to rationalise their suppliers and one such Authority, Anglian Water entered into a supply agreement in 1988 for the supply of submersible wastewater/sewage pumps and the provision of new/refurbished pumping stations. Biwater Pumps were the successful bidder and a Framework was formed. This agreement was re awarded many times and only expired in June 2004 after a 16 year run.

Biwater Pumps sold to Gilbert Gilkes & Gordon Ltd, Kendal

German motor manufacturer Emod became sole motor supplier for the submersible range in 2001. This has proved a great success with reliability, ease of assembly and the use of Eexd Zone 1 motors for Hazardous Area applications. In recent years Emod have also added oil filled motors to the range to help in applications such a sludge pumping. This also allowed the range to grow as the existing range of wet ends was capable of taking a larger motor that the previous supplier could not meet, this increased the range to 132kW (109kW Zone 1).

Gilkes sold the submersible pump design to Gorman-Rupp and Hydromarque, as the sole UK & Eire agent for Gorman-Rupp became the new supplier of this product line. Hydromarque continued to supply the conventional type Wallwin pumps from the Peterborough factory.