Instrument Solutions for all Industries

We are pleased to announce that ABLE INSTRUMENTS AND CONTROLS has received the Industrial Process News Commitment to Excellence Award.

In 1985, Don Burnham and Mike Shortall founded ABLE Instruments and Controls, on a former WWII Spitfire base. Don, a physicist, and Mike, an engineer, established the firm as a distributor of third-party measurement devices. They identified an opportunity to supply customers with the required technology, delivering long-term instrumentation and control solutions.

“ABLE Instruments & Controls was founded to fill the void created by the rigid supply nature of instrumentation manufacturers and the lack of engineering and support capability exhibited by traditional representative organisations. The experience of the company founders whilst working within both types of organization and, more importantly, the frustration of customers when searching for a solution to their measurement requirement, directly lead to the formation of the company in 1985.” David Quelch, Business Development and Marketing Manager explains.

ABLE is active across a broad range of industries including oil and gas, power, food, chemical, pharmaceutical, automotive, original equipment manufacturer solutions, renewables, water and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. Whatever the requirement, the fundamental ethos of ABLE remains the same. The ABLE framework is based on vision, evolution, and foundation. The company vision is to adapt or create relevant instruments with innovative designs or custom systems with the client able to access a skilled engineering and support system in place for the lifetime of the product. ABLE has grown from a concept into a global leader in instrument measurement, shifting away from conventional supply methodology.

The development of the e-commerce brand is an example of this new methodology, as ABLE continues to grow into additional markets whilst retaining its core values. In 2020, ABLE became the premier e-commerce distributor for Bartec, experts in providing safety solutions and products that prevent explosions. In 2023 ABLE were responsible for 95% of the Bartec’s field comms equipment range which includes ATEX cameras, mobile phones, and tablets.

ABLE’s Research and Development team has spent the past seven to eight years designing the FlareMaster, an advanced flare metering system with a modular configuration that has been deployed in multiple offshore installations. It features a dual redundancy and a supervisory system to enhance the performance of ultrasonic flare gas meters. It also determines the composition of the flare gas to assist in accurate reporting of Green House Gases. The FlareMaster is effective in reducing the uncertainty budget of the gas density, and for one operator this has led to a major improvement in emissions reporting and therefore contributed to Tier III compliance.

ABLE’s instrumentation is in use at Mogden Sewage Treatment Works. This facility services an area of 55 hectares with approximately 2.1 million users. ABLE was engaged as part of a £140 million project by Thames Water to upgrade the site’s Jerome Hydrogen Sulphide (H2S) Analysers. ABLE upgraded all 15 analyser systems to the current generation of Model J605 and housed each in thermostatically sealed environmental enclosures.

Since the upgrade, the J605 has improved accuracy in critical nuisance odour monitoring, plus automatic sampling and regeneration functionality that assist in longer term periods of unattended monitoring. The J605 has been employed by a variety of water treatment and waste management companies, as well as regulatory authorities including the Environment Agency, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, and Natural Resources Wales.

In further developments, ABLE are Magnetrol’s partner for exclusive distribution and support in the UK and Ireland. Magnetrol’s name is synonymous with an extensive range of innovative level and flow instrumentation and a highly respected name in the Oil and Gas industry. Magnetrol, like ABLE, has a strong ethos to deliver excellent service and with a competitive pricing structure that complements ABLE’s own, this partnership has a strong foundation for long-term success.

The ABLE range includes the Micronics UX5000 ATEX Zone 1 Ultrasonic Clamp-On Flow Meter and offers precise flow measurement without needing process downtime. Certified for Zones 1 and 2, it has an Intrinsically Safe measurement system with wet-calibrated transducers for reliable accuracy. The UX5000 features a separate display (DCSIU) and measurement unit (RMU) for flexible installation. This flow meter is ideal for harsh applications in industries like chemicals, water, and oil and being used to measure liquid hydrocarbon flow in oil processing and various chemical industry measurements.

Going forward, Dave explains what the future will hold. “ABLE are suppliers of a wide diversity of both cutting edge and traditional instrumentation to the process and research industries. We move into our 5th decade of operation as an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT), having obtained all the shares from the previous shareholder and thereby securing the independence and succession of ownership of the business.”

“We continue to remain faithful to the philosophy on which the company was founded, to supply solutions and not just products. ABLE has forged long term relationships with some of the strongest brands in the world of process control and analytical measurement and developed our own solutions to some of the more difficult measurements across the oil & gas, petrochemical, chemical, utilities, food and pharmaceutical sectors.”

For more information, please see below:
T +44 (0)118 9311188
info@able.co.uk
www.able.co.uk
247able.com