Here at Lavender International, we wanted to celebrate a successful 2022 and thank everyone for the continued support. 2022 has seen us mark the 46th year in business, and the 7th year as an Employee Owned business.
There were several new additions to our business this year: we purchased new Zetec equipment for our Eddy Current courses, we launched a new training facility in Ireland through our partnership with Welding Inspection Services (WIS), and we introduced new Sonatest waves equipment to use in our UT courses. We are constantly driving the business forward to provide high-quality training.
Also new to the business, we have welcomed two new technical staff to the Lavender family this year: Leonard Abrahams who is a technical assistant and Invigilator onsite, and Martin Cockram who teaches Radiography, Magnetic and Penetrant Testing.
We are also delighted to have several of our tutors achieve new Level 3 qualifications: Rebecca achieved her L3 certification in Radiography Welds, Chris Boreham achieved his L3 Penetrant Testing, and Ian Griffin achieved his L3 Weld Inspector.
We are very proud to have not one, not two, but THREE tutors (below) who won awards this year: Rachel Wood won the 2022 BINDT Practitioner Award, Gary Elliott won the 2022 BINDT Lifetime Achievement Award, and Tim Armitt was awarded the 2022 ASNT Fellow. Congratulations to all our fantastic tutors, who are a credit to us.
2 years after Covid first appeared, life has been getting back to normal and as such, we have had a backlog of conferences to attend. We kicked off the year with the IPEIA conference in Jasper, Alberta, Canada – where our very own Dave Miller presented a talk on “Chemistry to metallurgy to evolution of gas to disaster” – followed shortly by the ASNT ICPIIT in Houston, US. In August, we exhibited at the API Inspection and Mechanical Integrity Summit in Texas.
The team exhibited at the Materials Testing Conference at the start of September in Telford, UK, where Rachel and Gary were presented their awards at a special award ceremony. Tim was then presented with his award at the ASNT annual conference in Nashville, USA. It was lovely to meet new customers and see some friendly faces. We would like to say thank you to everyone who came to see us at events.
On 30th June we launched our new Work Experience Laboratory in a special Open Day at our school based at the Advanced Manufacturing Park in Rotherham. Designed to replicate multiple industry sectors and represent real world inspections, the new lab allows NDT Technicians the ability to gain valuable work experience through our Accelerated Work Experience Programme.
For the first time we organised a NDT Golf Day, which took place on the 30th, September. Congratulations to Dan Wells, who won the 2022 Lavender International Golf Tournament. He was presented with “The Dave Lavender Trophy”, commissioned in memory of Dave Lavender, who sadly passed away at the beginning of this year.
In Summary
Throughout the year, we have continued to be truly International through our flourishing partnerships in Canada, Greece, South Africa, and Ireland. From our offices in the USA and UK, we have seen people travel from all over the world to attend our courses.
From all of us at Lavender International, thank you for a wonderful 2022. We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Here’s to another amazing year in 2023.
