Formed in 1912 in South Wales, G Stow started life as a family run business and became G Stow and Sons in 1925. The company quickly prospered and expanded, which led to a relocation to Slough.
In 2017 the business was bought by South Staffordshire PLC in order to add drilling services to its overall water engineering services, which now include:
- Drilling and construction of water supply boreholes;
- Scientific and research exploration boreholes drilling
- Well engineering services;
- Refurbishment and rehabilitation of existing water wells;
- Geothermal and Gound Source Heat Pump (GSHP) drilling and completion projects;
- Carrying out pump testing operations;
- Supplier of submersible pumps;
- Supplier of ZSM rising main;
- Efficiency testing of client submersible pumps;
- Consulting services;
- ADIT surveys;
- Borehole camera surveys and geophysical surveys;
- Borehole headwork fabrication.
With such an extensive portfolio of services in its armoury, G Stow has been able to turn its hand to a wide range of projects for a number of different clients, such as water utility companies, commercial and industrial operations, such as power stations, hospitals and the mining industry. It also carries out work for energy firms, county councils and government organisations, such as the Coal Authority.
In terms of actual projects, these include drilling large diameter abstraction boreholes for the water Utility companies, GSHP drilling on open loop installations. G Stow has also been looking at ways to help customers utilise their existing abstraction boreholes to produce heat through GSHP. During the course of its various activities, the company has become an industry leader in health and safety onsite.
G Stow’s high standing within the marketplace has been more important given how competitive the market currently is, particularly with the GSHP and large diameter borehole drilling sectors. It is one of the very few drilling companies in the UK with the capability to drill large diameter boreholes, so it has a captive market in this area.
With regards to markets that are showing the most potential, there is a major push of geothermal and GHSP systems throughout the UK and this is a market it wants to develop. There is also a growth in the utilisation of old flooded mine working for GSHP systems.
The increasing demand for deep geothermal drilling and medium sized GSHP wells has led to a rise in opportunities, with the driver being to reach net zero carbon and reduce climate change. Shallow to deeper geothermal wells are now becoming a growing trend and G Stow is prepared and readied to serve this market.
G Stow has a long-proven record for delivering services to a high standard, which is enabling it to make the most of the growth trends within the marketplace. It is also one of the very few drilling companies that can offer large diameter flooded reverse drilling services, another major feather in its cap.
Despite its excellent reputation, G Stow is having to contend with a number of challenges that many other companies are being affected by. This includes maintaining the skill base necessary to keep taking the business forward. G Stow has not been alone in finding it extremely difficult to attract the right type of person into the industry, as there is a growing need for young people to take over from experienced personnel approaching retirement age.
Challenges aside, moving forward G Stow is focused on developing longer term relationships with key decision makers to secure larger contracts/projects that come its way. It is also keen to aggressively increase its presence in the UK onshore deep drilling market for both GSHP and geothermal, as well as for water companies and for research purposes. In addition, it wants to keep exploring the geothermal market, especially the need for housing developments and other commercial entities, such as university research groups, for their need of shallow to medium-deep borehole construction. It also wants to explore hydrogen, carbon capture and gas storage deep drilling projects in the UK energy market.
As well as making the most of the opportunities it is currently seeing in the markets in which it already operates, the fact that G Stow also has the capabilities to move into new sectors means that the company is ideally placed to add further to its already illustrious history in the years ahead.