Meet the boss of family firm Thorite who is helping factories to lower their energy bills

Today it has branches in Leeds, Huddersfield, Sheffield and Doncaster.It celebrated the centenary of its incorporation as Thomas Wright in 2021 with a move to new headquarters for the first time in 40 years.Wright, 51, plans to add £9m to its £20.9m turnover to reach £30m by 2030 by opening new branches, increasing market share within its existing customers and adding new product ranges.“Compressed air is used in almost every industry,” he says. “Any factory you go to will have something that has compressed air, from food manufacturing to mechanical engineering and chemicals.”One of the most recent successes for the business is supplying air compressors for resusable evacuation slide simulators, which have been used by training companies and major airlines like Air China.“Aircrafts use nitrogen which is stored at high pressure and the slides can only be used once,” Wright says.

“We use compressed air which takes a little longer to inflate and deflate but it’s good enough for training and it can be reused.”Thorite, which employs 135 staff in total, has 10 branches across the UK with plans to open more.It sells air compressors but also pipework installation and other equipment a customer might need.One of Wright’s main focuses at the moment is helping customers to save energy.“Compressed air isn’t the cheapest thing but factories are wasting so much energy without managing it properly,” says Wright. “A single small leak of 1.5mm might be costing someone £300 a year.”As well as carrying out air leak surveys, Thorite can also oversee data logging to make sure compressors are running optimally.“You can put a good case forward for replacing air compressors and pipework that are over 10 years old with the technologies that are available,” he says.But at a time of huge cost pressures on businesses, it’s a challenge to encourage them to spend even more money.He adds: “The market is going through waves of challenges at the moment. Our marketplace and our customers’ marketplace are really suffering from supply chain issues. What might have been easy to do projects have become more difficult as well because of the timescales it might take to get equipment.”One of the biggest areas of growth for the business is its systems department, which designs and builds pneumatic and electric automation systems.Fifteen years ago it employed two people and now it employs 10 and grew by just under half a million pounds in 2022/23.The company moved from a 12,000 sq ft site in Laisterdyke to a 30,000 sq ft site, off Canal Road, closer to the city centre, in what Wright calls a £3.6m ‘once in a generation’ investment.Now, with a fully functioning showroom, trade counter and specialised services under one roof, Thorite says it can provide customers with improved service, support and value.The site also allows specialised training courses to be carried out.“We’ve created a vastly-improved training centre for our customers and it's a lot better environment to work in,” says Wright.The previous headquarters held a lot of memories for Wright and his father, Thomas Edward 'Teddy' Wright, who moved the company there in 1971.As a young boy Wright remembers visiting the factory. “It was a very traditional workshop/warehouse environment in those days. It was a very male dominated business - less so now - with staff dressed in green overalls.“We used to have a big old fashioned invoicing machine, a bit like a typewriter, and things gradually changed over the years.“We refurbished the building a number of times to modernise it but it got to the point where we couldn’t do that any more.”Wright says he was always ‘destined’ to join the family business, although with hindsight he says he would have liked to have gained more experience in other areas before joining the firm full time.He came into the business to look after the IT systems and operations in 1983 after completing a business studies degree at Trent Polytechnic.“I did bits of everything over the years before I took over the business from my father in 2000.”Career highlights include the recent move to the new site and his two-year stint as president of the Bradford Chamber of Commerce from 2011 and another two years as chairman for the West and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce from 2015.“It’s always been important for me to promote manufacturing and Bradford,” he says.Wright says he feels a sense of responsibility to the family business. He is widowed and has a 21-year-old daughter who is at university.“There are business pressures but there are also pressures to actually keep the business running for the family,” he says.