Barr and Grosvenor Ltd manufactures calibrated weights in all classes from 1mg - 1 tonne and also produces specialised castings in iron, brass, bronze and other white metals in order to carry out important conservation work to historical architectural structures.
We helped them secure a £14k grant toward an investment critical to securing a contract to renovate Blackfriars Bridge in London, and then helped them secure support from Innovate UK and from the West Midlands Resource Reuse Centre.
The City Council have been working with the company for the past 5 years and its impressive list of conservation projects includes the restoration of The Iron Bridge in Shropshire, the production of a new Shrine to St Chad in Lichfield Cathedral, the casting of bronze door locks for galleon lighting columns down the Mall for the Queen Mother's funeral, door hinges for the Palace of Westminster and bronze handrails for Westminster Cathedral. The company also played a key role in the regeneration of the Springfield Brewery site in Wolverhampton.
In November 2024, Barr & Grosvenor Ltd worked with the City Council’s Business Growth team to secure grant funding of £14,685 towards the cost of a new 75kW inverter to upgrade the power supply to its small furnace. This investment replaced an increasingly unreliable power supply that was over 40 years old and becoming difficult to repair because of scarcity of parts. The new furnace will be used immediately to provide replacement balusters for Blackfriars Bridge and the Thames Tideway Project.
Commenting, MD Dominic Grosvenor said, “A fully functioning, reliable and efficient small furnace operation to complement our larger furnace is vital to the successful delivery of our current and future projects and to the company's resilience and growth. It will be used for a wide range of castings, such as parts for a glasshouse and conservatory at Tottenham House, a Grade I listed country house in Marlborough, and cast iron posts for the Chiswick embankment on the River Thames. The advice and support from Ross Edgley at the City Council’s Business Growth team has been invaluable – it’s great to know that help is always close at hand, and Ross has not only helped me secure the grant but has also introduced me to a number of other organisations that are able to support my business.”
This was the culmination of a busy year of interaction between the City Council and the company. As part of an initiative by the City Council to engage more businesses with the innovation ecosystem, we referred Barr & Grosvenor to Innovate UK Business Growth in April 2024 for further support and possible funding towards an R&D project to test future uses of the company’s waste sand.
The company’s ongoing engagement with Innovate UK highlighted that the relatively low volume of sand produced by Barr & Grosvenor compared with larger foundries in the region could be a barrier to finding secondary uses of it. In response to this, the Business Development Team referred the company to the West Midlands Resource Reuse Network (WMRRN) in September 2024. This referral to WMRRN has provided a potential solution to this barrier by adding the company to a regional group of foundries working with WMRRN to achieve the volumes necessary to begin attracting potential end users.