Amazon Filters: Agile Filtration Solutions for a Dynamic World
Quick and able
Trusted, nimble and growing, Amazon Filters is a leading manufacturer of filtration solutions, with the ability to outmaneuver its competition
Exceeding expectations in ever-changing environments, Amazon Filters is a business on the up. Serving a variety of sectors, including water, pharmaceutical and food & beverage, the company has established itself as a trusted filtration specialist over the course of the last 35 years, with a flexibility and accelerated speed to market unmatched by its peers.
“As a business, Amazon Filters offer tens of thousands of filter permutations and housings and supply our customers with those products on short delivery times,” declares Managing Director Neil Pizzey. “That is really our whole premise, but we dilute it down to the phrase ‘quick and able’. We compete with some very large multinationals and we pride ourselves on being a bit nimbler than them. We are big enough to be credible and trusted, but small enough to maintain that flexibility to provide a customized product portfolio with fast delivery.”
The past half-decade at Amazon Filters has been defined by a major investment cycle, which has allowed the business to expand its sales operations and increase its growth rate. Underpinning the company’s ‘quick and able’ proposition, the most recent phase of investment has been focused around improving and upgrading Amazon Filters’ Camberley manufacturing site.
“We invested well in excess of £1 million into our manufacturing, focused primarily around building infrastructure, factory space and equipment,” Neil reports. “We’ve insourced the bulk of our metal work, including a new press shop, sheet metal and CNC machining facility to help vertically integrate the majority of our filter housing manufacturing, which again, supports our ability to deliver bespoke products in short order. We are a business investing through its life cycle and this latest upgrade program is making us more competitive and responsive than ever.”
Aided by the company’s new facilities, Amazon Filters’ extensive range of filter cartridges, capsules, bags, housings and accessories continues to evolve. Though it may only be two months into 2021, the firm has already added new products to strengthen its portfolio and better serve its clients.
“One of the new products we’ve introduced – the SupaSep LGP – is a high-performance liquid coalescer line to support critical separation processes,” Neil reveals. “Used to remove liquid droplets from gas streams, these are already employed extensively in upstream, midstream and downstream oil and gas operations, and can be supplied in bespoke housings or as direct retrofits. Benefitting from patented interpleat stabilization technology, SupaSep LGP products offer a novel functional improvement to what is currently on the market.
“In addition to this,” Neil continues, “we have recently strengthened our meltblown SupaGard range with the addition of what we call KilBac technology. This is the use of antimicrobial and anti-algal additives in the manufacturing process to inhibit the growth of bacteria and algae on the filter when in service, stopping the product from being blinded prematurely.”
Recently nominated for Manufacturer of the Year and Exporter of the Year at the Made in South East Awards, Amazon Filters’ success has not come without its challenges. This has never been truer than in 2020, when the company, like the rest of the world, took on the difficulties presented by Covid-19.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has been a completely new challenge for us as we tried to maintain operations for all our critical industry customers,” Neil states. “Until something like that happens, you don’t realize what a vital cog you are in the wider world and just how many sectors rely on you. As a company involved in healthcare, pharmaceuticals and energy, among others, we had a moral imperative to keep going.
“It’s been a challenging year, but we carried on successfully, despite the crisis. We are especially proud of supplying water filters to help front line NHS staff and Nightingale Hospital Projects. Those are the things that go beyond commercial satisfaction and allow you to recognize that you are contributing to the greater good. We are not NHS workers, but we did all we could to contribute.”
As a privately owned, family-run business, Amazon Filters’ number one priority throughout the pandemic was to protect and support its workforce. Over the last 12 months, through a combination of remote and onsite working, the company has kept its people safe and, consequently, continues to fulfil its obligations to clients.
“From the very beginning, we were very clear on our responsibilities to our people, our clients, and to the wider world,” Neil remarks. “We tried to do everything right because we quickly recognized that, if we shut down Amazon Filters, critical customers such as vaccine manufacturers and drinking water suppliers were going to encounter costly disruption.
“One thing we are incredibly proud of is the way our people reacted,” he adds. “The way they adapted in order to continue supplying our customers has spoken volumes about the resilience and fortitude of our staff. There have been challenges – trying to train people while socially distancing creates real difficulties for example – but the ability of our people to adjust has been exemplary.”
With Covid-19 vaccines rolling out across the world, and the worst of the pandemic hopefully behind us, Amazon Filters is looking forward to expanding its presence in 2021 as it turns its attentions to potential opportunities in Asia and the US. At present, around 70 per cent of the company’s sales are in exports, with more than half of that going to the EU, but Neil believes this is a positive sign for future growth beyond Europe.
“We firmly believe there is a place for our high-quality, high-spec products, combined with a credible, traceable European manufacturing base,” he asserts. “Our flexible, responsive approach to customers puts us in a really good position to expand the business and we are well-set for the future in terms of structure and capacity thanks to our investment program. Of course, we will be looking to increase our sales in the EU, but we are really focused on trying to become recognized asa truly global player in the filtration sector over time.”
No matter how much the company expands, Amazon Filters will remain true to its core values, including its commitment to the environment. The company’s environmental policy has always focused on minimizing waste and avoiding pollution, as well as ensuring that all equipment, technology and practices fully comply with environmental legislation.
In 2020, Amazon Filters successfully completed its ISO14001 external audit, gaining perfect results with no non-conformances. The company also installed a new robotic pallet wrapper – an automated technology that can scan pallets and calculate the number of spins required to securely wrap contents. Robotic pallet wrappers are one of the latest and most advanced innovations on the market for helping businesses reduce the amount of plastic shrink wrap they use, and thus, assisting them in cutting down their environmental footprint.
As a company that receives a great deal of cardboard-packaged raw material, Amazon Filters took action in the last 12 months to cut down its packaging waste. In 2020 alone, the company recycled over 40 tons of cardboard, but it won’t be stopping there. As Amazon Filters continues to find ways to develop its green strategies, in 2021 the company aims to overhaul the materials used in the packaging of its finished goods – moving away from plastics and introducing recyclable, paper-based solutions where possible.
Proven filtration experts, Amazon Filters has demonstrated over the years that it can be relied upon to deliver quality products and first-class customer service to its clients across the globe. Though, after 35 years in business, it has become an increasingly complex and expansive organization, the customer remains central to the Amazon Filters experience.
While expansion and investment will continue, Amazon Filters still vows to get the little things right – answering phone calls promptly, acknowledging queries within two hours, shipping in-stock products the next day, and resolving problems efficiently and satisfactorily. The company’s technology might be advanced, but the approach to client relations is simple – to provide a service that shows customers how much Amazon Filters cares.
“Our whole reason for being is to serve the desires of our customers,” Neil says. “Filter products aren’t ornaments; you buy them because you need them. We really believe that what people want from Amazon Filters is knowledge enveloped in a physical product. We are trying to make sure we spread our expertise, communicating it through our teams and out to our customers. Our role is to recognize and solve our clients’ problems.”
Amazon Filters
Products: Filter solutions
www.amazonfilters.com