ATI Tank Hire was established in Great Yarmouth in 1983 to service the burgeoning offshore gas and oil industries, Since then the company has blossomed, spreading into a wider range of customers not just throughout the UK but also as far afield as Africa, Canada and even South America.
General manager Darren Bullard explains, “We have built up a very solid business from our site here in Great Yarmouth. While our work started as a service to the local offshore gas industry, we have now a much wider client base and have been involved in many extremely prestigious contracts, including the Channel Tunnel, the Second Severn Crossing, Heathrow Airport, the Millennium Dome and the Olympic Village. We have even been involved in television productions, including ‘Death is now my Neighbour!’ and ‘The Wench is Dead’. We are a quality conscious company, being accredited to ISO 9001:2008 over the last 5 years and have a very loyal workforce, many of whom have been here for many years. I personally came here in 1989 for three weeks temporary work as a coded welder / fabricator, and am still here, taking over as general manager about eight years ago.”
ATI currently has over 320 tanks, ranging in volume from 1m3 up to 111m3. The tanks are available in both mild steel and stainless steel. Some of the tanks are bought in new from Cookson & Zinn in Ipswich, while silos are bought in from the specialists, Portasilo in York. Sometimes, used tanks of good quality are bought in, refurbished to our own requirements in our fabrication workshop and repainted by hand; all tanks go out looking like new.
Darren explains, “We still work closely with the offshore industry and have a lot of tanks being used for transportation and storage of acid, dry powders, diesel fuel etc. Our staff are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to answer a call from our customers. A good example was an emergency call-out from a repair dock in Hull, where an offshore rig supply ship had come into dry dock for inspection following a collision. We had to supply nine tanks in a hurry to store up to 500m3 of glycol and diesel oil.
“In the Olympic Village, there was a great deal of soil stabilisation required so we supplied tanks and silos to hold the lime and cement, plus the ground water that was removed was stored in our tanks to allow the solids to settle before pumping the water to drain. For this we used our ‘Russian Doll Tanks’, where the water went into the largest one, and then into the middle one and finally into the smallest one before discharge.”
Darren concludes, “Over the years, we have continued to invest in new equipment, Last year we spent in excess of £200,000 on new and top quality second-hand tanks and silos. We believe that we are the No 1 and have achieved our top market position through always having a wide range of quality tanks and silos available, also our enjoyment of what we do; SHOWS.
