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.
Dr John Irons CENG
Group Chief Engineer
Dr John Irons joined Howden Group Technology shortly after leaving university and became the company specialist in fields ranging from rotordynamics to CFD. In 2015 he joined Halifax Fan as Group Chief Engineer.
John is a chartered engineer who brings a wealth of rotating machinery knowledge to Halifax Fan and has been instrumental in pushing the boundaries of the technology that we employ in our fan designs. He has extensive knowledge of rotating machinery development and application knowledge, having worked with rotating machinery and their ancillary components in a wide variety of sectors.
As Group Chief Engineer, John has a team of specialist working for him delivering fan development, more complex fan designs and project management to the operational companies. This allows us to respond at the correct level to customer requirements from initial enquiry through to operational life management.
Doug Nelson
Business Development USA
Doug Nelson is a degreed Mechanical Engineer from the University of Wisconsin Madison.
He began his career as a design engineer for an American fan manufacturer and later transitioned into technical sales of industrial fans. His career has spanned over thirty years of success in this field.
Dr Ian Parker
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT/APPLICATIONS
Ian joined Halifax Fan after a period working on product development in the water industry. After a long career of driving forward product knowledge and application solutions he is one of our leading fan specialists.
Ian has actively participated in fan development, considering many aspects from CFD analysis to design for manufacture. This breadth of experience coupled with a strong technical background gives Ian unique insight in to the life of fan designs, from initial concept through to standardised designs and fans in operation.
As well as product development Ian's ability to think outside the box means that he often engages in a Project Engineer role to design solutions to meet complex customer requirements. This provides a path for less experienced or talented engineers to follow, both with respect to the designs and their fan knowledge. Ian is a key player in our ability to be not just another fan company, but a provider of diverse customer solutions.
Kevin Garbutt
MCIPS & Purchasing Manager
Kevin has been with Halifax Fan for 20 years. He originally started his career here as the general buyer of materials & services.
After a number of years in this role he made the step up to Purchasing manager & then sourcing manger. Both roles required him to develop his skills of managing a procurement team.
In 2016 Kevin was delighted to be invited to take on the challenge of managing manufacturing operations. He has been fulfilling the role of Production Manager since September 2016.
Wayne McKenna
Technical Sales Engineer
Wayne originally started at Halifax Fan as a sheet metal apprentice and after seven years working across all departments; moved into the office, where he later attended Huddersfield University for further education.
Wayne's main role at Halifax Fan is as an experienced engineer in sales both internally and externally. Wayne works on the front end engineering selecting and specifying the fans before preparing the technical tenders.
With over 20 years’ experience at Halifax Fan Wayne also represents his department in both the daily production and NCR meetings, mentors new sales engineers and often produces new programs and reference material for internal and customer use. He is also heavily involved in our online marketing on both our website and social media.
Graeme Mount
Technical Sales Engineer
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.
Waheed Nadir
Technical Sales Engineer
Waheed recently joined Halifax Fan having spent 7 years working for another fan manufacturer. He is a talented individual currently attending further education at University of Huddersfield, aiming for a First class bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering (BEng).
He is a fully qualified Mechanical Engineer and has worked in various different departments/job roles such as Workshop Apprentice, Apprentice Engineer, Contracts Engineer, Project Engineer, Design Engineer and Research & Development Engineer.
Waheed intends to complete his BEng degree with a first class BEng qualification and continue to go for a Masters and PhD in Engineering in the coming years.
Neil Baker
Spares and Repairs and Service Manager
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. Neil's role is co-coordinating 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 and Purchasing
Paul started at Halifax Fan over thirty five years ago as an apprentice sheet metal worker.
He has since worked as a mechanical fitter before moving up to his current role in Logistics and Purchasing and now works with our suppliers, freight forwarders, foremen, inspectors, and customers.
Charles Hong
Shenzhen Sales Manager
Charles Joined Halifax fan as a graduate in 2011, after 5 years working as sales engineer.
Charles was promoted as the Shenzhen sales manager in 2016, he is still young but smart, serious and very organized which make him look and think much maturely than his actual age.
Halifax fan is a global company which has very flat internal culture, our business is growing strongly all around the world, especially in China, we can see Halifax fan will be one of the most powerful strength in the world customized industrial centrifugal fan market in years.
Diane Wang
Shanghai Sales Manager
Diane joined Halifax Fan in 2007. She has seen Halifax Fan in China grow rapidly and has also grown herself whilst working for the company.
For the past five years Diane has been working in the Halifax Fan Shenzhen branch as a sales engineer.
Diane has a strong sales and marketing background, developing new markets and re-organising teams based on growing business demands. 10 years’ experience coupled with effective communication skills enable her to provide customers the utmost professional service.
Our Departments
Design Team
Our design team was originally located in UK. To address the needs of China and other regions we have grown and developed a strong design team in China. Through a focus on design quality, programable designs and leadership, we ensure that all customers will receive fans that are designed to consistent standards across our design team. We also engage In regular design reviews, assessing design features, methods of construction and latest developments to ensure that our designs meet and/or exceed current industry standards. This enables us to work with customer across a wide range of industries.
Our main tool for delivering designs is Inventor. Through Inventor we can provide 3D models in various formats to suit customer needs. It also enables our engineers to carry out Finite Element Analysis if our designs are identified as requiring it through use of our in-house design tools. In addition our design teams have access to our development team, who have the skills and experience to solve more complex design work.
In moving from a traditional fan company to a customer solutions driven company, we have retained engineers with a wealth of fan design experience and enhanced the team with engineers from diverse backgrounds. Although many of our engineers are degree educated, we focus on growing and developing talent. This talent is not just in delivering good quality designs, it is also in delivering projects that meet customer requirements, engaging with customers at the level required to ensure success. In recognition of this our design team members are Project Engineers, with new recruits from a design background receiving project management training.
DEVELOPMENT TEAM
Since our inception as a fan company we have focussed on development of our products. This involves development of the products and, through our understanding of the products, tools to design the products. We now have a wealth of experience and knowledge in driving forward solutions. This enables us to not only develop fans but to also engage with customer to deliver unique solutions and to work closely with customers to resolve operational issues. This forms a corner stone of our ability to be a customer solutions driven company.
Our development team is the central hub of our fan knowledge and is primarily located in the UK. However we have talent across our business and will drive development projects in the most suitable location, often aligning the development work with the customer location. This enables design team members to engage in development work, enhancing their experience and understanding of our products.
Where required our development team can and do engage in delivering customer projects, especially where there is a requirement for a novel solution. This both raises our ability to deliver solutions and ensures that our development work is focussed on customer driven requirements.
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 Garbutt, Kevin is a qualified purchaser.
Documentation
With evermore stringent specifications and the growing need for documentation our drawing office staff are all proficient at producing todays documentation needs
Fan Case Department
Our skilled fan case team is manned by qualified, experienced sheet metal workers. We also have a laser operators.
Impeller Department
Our 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 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 as each cone is hand formed.
Fitting Department
Our fitting team are all experienced mechanical, fabrication engineers, some of whom also work on site. We also have experienced painters who 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.