AWARD-winning Huntingdon manufacturer Pursuit Dynamics is to launch in the nuclear decontamination sector with a potentially multi-million-pound joint venture.

AWARD-winning Huntingdon manufacturer Pursuit Dynamics is to launch in the nuclear decontamination sector with a potentially multi-million-pound joint venture.

The company, which was The Hunts Post Huntingdonshire Business of the Year in 2007 and whose intellectual property manager Dr Marcus Fenton was judged Employee of the Year in the 2009 awards, has signed an agreement with the UK’s world-renowned National Nuclear Laboratory.

Pursuit, which styles itself PDX, will own 60 per cent of the new company, which will develop, produce and market products for the global nuclear market. In effect, NNL will use its extensive marketing network to sell PDX’s IP, which already has a track record in other areas of decontamination.

Assuming the green light from NNL’s shareholders, the joint venture should be up and running by November this year, and the first revenue are expected to start to flow in within 18 months.

The joint venture combines NNL’s experience as a global market leader in the provision of nuclear technology services and PDX’s best in class technology, the Huntingdon company said.

“The new product range launched by the joint venture will focus immediately on addressing the enormous legacy decommissioning issues and future decontamination potential of the global nuclear industry.”

The nuclear industry estimates that the cost of decommissioning the UK’s legacy nuclear sites is expected to be �73.6billion, while the global cost is estimated to be over �300bn. When combined with the estimated cost of decontaminating new build nuclear reactors, the industry estimates the global market to be worth in excess of �600bn.

Returns to PDX from the UK alone could be measured in tens of millions so, with the UK accounting for just 10 per cent of the global market, the overall potential, if the JV succeeds, is enormous, sources believe.

Mark Sharpe, Strategic Business Development at NNL, said PDX’s ‘smarter and innovative technology’ had the potential to bring huge cost-savings to the UK nuclear clean-up programme.

“It will also promote leading-edge environmental management best practice and enable the UK to penetrate the global market,” he added.

The new venture will be seen as further vindication of the decision of the new chief executive Roel Pieper to split PDX into core operating divisions – in bio-fuels, food and brewing, and decontamination and defence.

As well as selling expertise and equipment – it has recently also won major export contracts in bio-fuel production in North America and brewing in the key German market – PDX aims to do partnership deals with the ‘best-in-class’ in the relevant field.

The latest deal follows a 50:50 agreement with German decontamination experts K�rcher in April with a view to tackling the potentially-lucrative North American market.