Donaldson Filter Components Ltd

Donaldson is a leading worldwide provider of air and liquid filtration systems and replacement parts principally for diesel engine equipment and industrial filtration solutions. It has a large manufacturing and distribution facility located in Hull, East Yorkshire.

Donaldson joined NDI in January 2004 with aspirations to penetrate the UK defence market. Donaldsons worked to build their profile within the defence community by exploiting their NDI membership. In particular, NDI introduced the company into BAE Systems and during DVD 2005 NDI brought them significant market intelligence regarding UK armoured vehicle upgrade programmes. 

This prospect matured into a large opportunity to manufacture and supply air intake filtration systems for the Warrior Infantry Fighting Vehicle fleet upgrade programme. Donaldson offering into this upgrade programme employed their Strata™ panels and PowerCore™ filtration technology. Pairing Donaldson Strata Panels with PowerCore filtration technology manufactured with Ultra-Web® advanced nanofiber air filtration media in a custom engineered package. This offered significant advantages over the original system: increasing the time between filter maintenance intervals, decreasing spares consumption and simplifying maintenance. This would provide a very real operational benefit to UK Armed Forces since these military vehicles perform a variety of combat roles and are heavily used in high-dust areas such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

As is often the case with defence programmes discussions and de-risking work proceeded slowly, with NDI continually supporting Donaldsons at exhibitions to maintain the momentum. In December 2008 the company’s and NDI’s patience was rewarded. The contract award, valued in excess of £2m, was announced to supply 790 air filtration systems for the Warrior Fleet. Employing Donaldson filtration technology in a custom-engineered air intake system for the Warrior. This will mean that, in future, the MoD will need to purchase significantly fewer spare filter elements, further reducing costs and the number of used filters that end up in a landfill. More importantly the Warrior will return to being an effective combat vehicle in theatres such as Afghanistan.

"As the Warrior fleet is upgraded with the new and improved Donaldson Air Filtration System, we are expecting both immediate benefits and long-term cost savings," said Mr Mike Venables, Director Whole Fleet Management Integrated Project Team with the UK’s Ministry of Defence."

In parallel with the business development activity targeting the Warrior programme, in early 2008 NDI alerted Donaldsons to an Urgent Operational Requirement for the MoD’s Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked) CVR(T). Donaldsons and NDI’s groundwork that established the filtration technology as highly beneficial to military vehicle applications paid dividends and Donaldson were selected to provide 108 CVR(T) systems worth over £300k.

History continues to repeat itself and following a similar story of NDI support and world-beating technology, Donaldson recently announced that they had been selected to develop an air filtration system for the FV430 Bulldog vehicle. Potentially valued at over £1.0m, it forms another significant boost to the Yorkshire company safeguarding jobs in these troubled times. In addition, a further order for some 107 CVR(T) air filtration systems has now been received and Donaldson equipment is now being fitted to many of the new suite of UK Fighting Vehicles including: Jackal, Mastiff and Coyote.

“I am proud that NDI played its part successfully and was able, over a period of five years, to assist in the winning such substantial contracts for Donaldson” commented Robin Fox, NDI Managing Director. ‘Doubly satisfying is the fact that, thanks to Donaldson technology the troops in theatre now have vehicle air filtration systems which actually do the job”.