Cathro Compressors, a family run business based in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, is celebrating its 20th year as an Atlas Copco Compressors re-seller providing sales, service and installation of new and used stationary, oil-lubricated, industrial air compressors, pipework and ancillary equipment. Originally founded in 1986, trading as Cathro Air Compressor Services until its name change in 2002, the company was established by Tom Cathro, a trained compressed air service engineer who is now Director for the group. Also on the team is Tom’s wife Eileen, who handles secretarial and administrative duties, together with their son Peter who looks after the servicing activities of the company.
As a result of their personal approach to business relationships, the Cathro Compressors team has established a broad customer base, 50% of whom have been regular purchasers of equipment and service procedures over the past twenty years. Cathro deals with many different types of manufacturing organisations whose diverse outputs include wooden pallets, bricks, fine bone china, chocolate, specialised castings, safety/security products and road marking materials. The team also carries out work at local hospitals and universities’ compressor plants.
Although many of the  170+ customers on the books are comparatively local to the Cathro operational base, with nearly 400 compressor installations to oversee the team’s workload involves travel as far north as Dumfriesshire, Scotland, as well as west into mid-Wales. One secret of the company’s commercial success is the fact that with the possible exception of sub-contracted pipework fitting or welding requirements, all other activities are carried out by the Cathro family members. Their business mission statement may be a cliché, but as Paul O’Neill, Atlas Copco Compressors’ industrial air business manager confirms: “In their case it’s true, they are ‘big enough to cope but small enough to care’. We are all looking forward to the next twenty years.”