In 1977, the Queen was celebrating her Silver Jubilee, Virginia Wade was about to become Wimbledon Champion and the Consett Steel Works was by a long way, the largest employer in our community. In June of that year, John Dyer and his son Paul set up a small engineering business in a tin-hut in Annfield Plain, making pipe fittings, mould tools and servicing the local mining industry.
They worked hard and developed an excellent reputation for getting the job done but unfortunately there was a fire and the tin-hut burnt down. The factory was rebuilt and they started again from scratch and the business continued to grow and flourish, employing more and more local people until the late eighties when John decided to retire and Paul took the business forward on his own.
Over the next 10 years Dyer Engineering acquired several other companies, to become one of the largest employers in the area and a really big player in the local engineering sector and in 2001, the business undertook a huge expansion of the Annfield Plain site which we still occupy today.
Paul Dyer made the big decision to retire in 2013, and the next owners of Dyer Engineering, Graeme Parkins & Richard Bradley took over in June of that year.
In 2014 on the back of a £2m investment program the foundations were set in place for the future growth of Dyer Engineering. We took over the former Schmitz Cargobull facility (adding an additional 70,000 sqft of space), invested in new equipment and machinery and embarked on a program to build our talent pipeline to ensure we have the skills for the business to grow.
In 2017, Dyer Engineering celebrated it’s 40th Anniversary and commemorated the event with a specially brewed ale – Morrison Busty (which takes it’s name from the name of the pit the Annfield Plain facility is built over). It’s an amazing achievement for a business like ours to reach a 40-year anniversary and our aim is to achieve many more into the future.
Looking forward we have ambitious plans to grow the business and continue to develop Dyer Engineering as a special place to work.