Celebrating 20 Years of Innovation: Our Journey at Cokebusters

This year marks a major milestone for us at Cokebusters – our 20th anniversary!  What began in 2005 as a family-run venture has grown into a globally recognised leader in mechanical cleaning and tube inspection.  As we reflect on the past two decades, we’re very proud of how far we’ve come and excited about the future ahead.

The Beginning

Our founder, John Phipps MBE, established Cokebusters 22nd April 2005 having already accrued a decade of experience in the field of “pigging”, as it was affectionately termed then!  John established a modest team including highly skilled Operator Glen Gamble and a handful of experienced “piggers”.  Together they set to work positioning Cokebusters as a trusted, reliable, family-run service provider to the oil and gas industry.

From the very start the company’s mechanical decoking service was in high demand.  Fortunately that has been the story all along and Cokebusters has never been short of work to do.

Without distraction, Cokebusters has always concentrated its efforts on being the best it can be in its specialist niche.  Until recently most fired heater tubes had been steam cleaned and mechanical cleaning was in its infancy.  On Tuesday John reflected on the industrial scene in those early days and the splash that Cokebusters made when it entered the market:

“From the outset we introduced and patented a new design of scraper pig. This revolutionised site performance, cleaning tubes quicker and more thoroughly.”

Changing Times

As L. P. Hartley wrote in The Go-Between: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”  This rings true when we reflect back on how the world has changed around us during the past two decades.

Cokebusters communicated with its first international clients by fax.  Bids were sent in multiple hard copies, sealed in wax with a company stamp to ensure they had not been tampered with… a common practice in the Middle Ages!

John reflects on the infancy of the technology at that time:

“The first ten years we could barely keep pace with demand. The company daren’t open a sales department; the phone calls kept coming in.  We built more decoking machines and just kept striving to look after an ever growing list of clients. The market kept changing and we changed with it; happily the process tubes remained the same, as did the coke!”

Breaking New Ground in Tube Inspection

Mechanical decoking was often challenged by clients: ‘How do we know the tubes are clean?’

This led to independent R&D from the late 1990s, but it was once Cokebusters was formed that we could put decoking and inspection properly in harmony. The Smart Pig grew in performance and reliability as other technologies developed. Like all such scientific achievement, there was benefit from outside advances such as battery improvements, miniaturisation and the growing power of microprocessors.

Investment began to design an ultrasonic inspection tool that would scan the internal and external tube surfaces giving data to show the condition of the tube wall.  Within a few years Cokebusters patented a single-bodied Smart Pig, capable of navigating the complex internal geometry of fired heaters and this quickly became a game-changer in the industry.

Pioneering Combined Services

From the outset, Cokebusters set out to offer something unique – a combined service of mechanical cleaning and intelligent pigging. This integrated approach not only streamlined operations for our clients, but also minimised downtime and provided detailed insights into the condition of fired heater process tubes.

Patented from 2007, this combined service was welcomed enthusiastically by clients from the outset. In one self-contained site operation with all operators employed by the same company and working in close alliance, cleaning would be seamlessly followed by valuable tube inspection pass after pass, circuit after circuit. This was both time and cost efficient.

In this way the company quickly established itself as a one-stop-shop.  No other service provider could clean AND inspect a fired heater tube.

Growing Globally, Innovating Constantly

From our UK Technology Centre based alongside the Airbus Estate in a quiet corner of North Wales, we’ve expanded our reach significantly over the years. In 2013 we opened our Americas Operations Centre in Houston, Texas, allowing us to extend our reach and serve energy industry across North and South America.

We’ve always believed that to maintain the highest standards, our critical equipment – from our specialist Double Pumping Units to our water filtration machines – must be designed and manufactured in-house. This approach ensures we maintain full control over the build and maintenance of our assets and remain at the cutting edge for both quality and innovation in our field.

We now have a fleet of over twenty machines in operation with more in production at our UK Technology Centre.  With genuine operator feedback, we strive for each new machine to be a little better than the last one.

Diversification and Pigging the Unpiggable

We’re especially proud of our recent work in renewable energy, as this represents the beginning of an essential diversification in our business. When faced with the challenge of inspecting ultra-small diameter tubing in a vast solar steam plant in Oman, we developed the world’s smallest untethered intelligent pig at just 1.5″ in diameter. This pioneering device enabled us to inspect more than 100km of tubing, previously considered ‘unpiggable’.

As the global energy landscape shifts towards a more sustainable future, we recognise the need to adapt and also offer tube and pipeline support to the renewable energy industry.  Our continued investment in innovation means we are well placed to solve new challenges specific to clients in this sector.

We’re currently working closely with the University of Strathclyde on a Knowledge Transfer Project to develop our fifth-generation Smart Pig, which will allow us to detect even smaller defects with enhanced precision.

Recognised for Excellence

Over the years, our dedication has earned us numerous accolades, each one a proud moment for our team. These include:

Company of the Year 2023 from the Energy Industries Council, in recognition of our outstanding contribution to the energy sector.

The Digital Revolution Award at the British Chamber of Commerce Business Awards 2024, celebrating our advancements in technology and innovation.

Two prestigious King’s Awards for Enterprise – one in International Trade and the other in Innovation – a rare and humbling achievement.

Behind Every Great Company…

is a woman making it all work!  For Cokebusters that woman has been Janet Mottrom.  She has been with the company since the very beginning and so this week also marks her 20 years of service.

In that time Janet has made great effort to up-skill and add value to the company, particularly in the area of accountancy where she naturally excels.  As a result she has graduated from Admin Assistant, to Company Secretary and Accounts Manager and most recently Company Director.

We joke that if Janet cut herself, she’d bleed green!  She is the Cokebusters Mum and the company is hugely grateful to her for her loyalty and exceedingly hard work over the years.

Janet always goes above and beyond; taking calls from site at all hours of the day and night, problem-solving at every turn. During the COVID pandemic Janet was one of a handful of employees who kept the lights on.  Whilst the majority of premises staff were furloughed, Janet continued to go into the office every day, despite a major building refurbishment going on around her… not before time, bearing in mind that when we took ‘The Armoury Building’ over it had been empty since the Royal Air Force left in 1957!

Giving Back

One aspect of our business we don’t talk about often is the D-Day Revisited charity we established in 2009.  Since then we have supported the charity in its mission to assist British and American veterans who wished to return to the battlefields in which they served during the Second World War.

For 11 years we arranged group pilgrimages each year to Normandy to commemorate the D-Day anniversaries.  During that time several Cokebusters employees volunteered to join as helpers, which was an enriching experience for them and much appreciated by the veterans themselves.

In 2015 the charity was selected by His Majesty’s Treasury to manage and distribute government LIBOR funding to any British WW2 veterans wishing to return to a European battlefield to mark a liberation anniversary and pay tribute to those they left behind.  With most veterans now over 100 years of age, 2025 marks the final year of this decade long grant program.

Giving back has always been at the heart of our ethos at Cokebusters and we continue to support local community causes wherever we can.

Looking Ahead

As we celebrate this 20-year milestone, we remain as committed as ever to our mission: delivering industry-leading solutions that enhance efficiency, uphold safety and support cleaner energy practices across the globe.

We’d like to thank all our clients, partners and team members – past and present – who’ve been part of the Cokebusters journey.  Here’s to the next 20 years of innovation, excellence and growth!