News: HRH at the AMP

HRH The Duke of Kent, a champion of British business home and abroad, has looked into the future – happening now, in Rotherham.

After seeing a range of world-beating companies on a visit to the South Yorkshire borough, he told Mayor Shaukat Ali: "Rotherham is leading the way."

At the Advanced Manufacturing Park's Technology Centre he met some of its innovative tenants and got an insight into how they are developing future technologies.

They range from hydrogen-generated eco-power to ways of keeping power sources operating longer and better. He also saw the future in a very different shape – that of skeleton-bobsleds and sled blades that could help local Olympians.

The Technology Centre's Green Wing is one of the first projects in the UK to use hydrogen energy to power a large commercial building and to create a store of hydrogen for use as a fuel for vehicles.

Project manager Jason Stoyel, of TNEI, the company behind the system, explained how the system creates hydrogen fuel through electrolysis powered by a wind turbine rather than conventional sources.

At Polymer Techniques, the royal visitor heard from Paul Short how it is developing new technologies offering manufacturers and operators of off-shore wind turbines, aircraft power units, valves and pumps longer periods of trouble-free operation.

He also visited Bromley Technologies, launched by two brothers pushing the boundaries of high-speed bob-skeleton racing – Richard Bromley and brother Kristan.

Kristan is current world champion. His fiancée, Shelley Rudman, won silver for Britain at the last Winter Olympics.

Their partner-on-ice Nicola Minichiello won the World Championship in the two-woman bobsleigh last February. All three are contenders for places in Great Britain's team for February’s Winter Olympics.

His Royal Highness was particularly impressed when chief operating officer Mike Maddock, himself a former bob-sleigher, explained Bromley's work with schoolchildren to get them interested in science and technology.

AMP website
Rotherham

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