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About Us

UBH International is today one of the world’s leading specialist manufacturers of transportable tanks for bulk liquids. The history of the company goes back more than half a century to the late forties when, as ‘United Boilers’, or ‘UB’ for short, the company’s skills in pressure vessel manufacture were initially developed.

In 1958 the company moved to its present site, becoming ‘Universal Bulk Handling’, the name change marking a conscious shift of emphasis to focus on equipment for bulk liquid transport. Originally a manufacturer of specialist road tankers, the company began to diversify from the early 1970's onwards, using the skills of its engineers and workforce to develop a range of intermodal tank containers or ISO-tanks.

By the early '90's these new products had completely supplanted road-barrel manufacture at Burscough, with UBH becoming one of the world's leading manufacturers of tank containers. In this period the company developed its trademark beam tank design which, despite its elegant form, became the workhorse of the world’s major leasing fleets, thanks to its low tare weight and remarkable in-service resilience. This tank type, now also built under a UBH licence in China, remains an industry-leading design with well over 15000 in service. By 1998 the company was producing in excess of 1,800 units per annum, almost 15% of world tank container production.

Following a management and employee buyout in August 1999, UBH International became an employee-owned company, and began to re-focus its activities. It made a conscious decision to move away from standard tank container production, forging a ground breaking alliance and licensing deal with CIMC of China, the world largest producer of freight containers. With this arrangement in place to supply the volume side of the market, UBH International has been free to concentrate on building more specialised custom-built units.

This period has seen the development not only of a range of products for the offshore oil and gas industry, but also cryogenic tanks for industrial gases, static tanks for all kinds of industrial products and tanks for the carriage of nuclear waste.

UBH International today employs around 100 people, many of them shareholders in the company, and continues to enjoy a world-wide reputation as a manufacturer of tanks for the transportation of hazardous liquids and liquefied gases. Renowned for the high quality of its specialist equipment, the company continues to build upon its success by the combination of innovative design, close attention to its customers’ needs and the skill and professionalism of its shareholder workforce.

A Reputation built on Innovation and Quality

UBH International possesses a strong brand identity, not least by virtue of its distinctive frame design, which in turn gives its main product line a number of highly prized advantages:

Low tare weight; High resilience and resistance to damage; Low cost of maintenance. When combined with a general reputation for high quality and a unique track record of never having had to make a major product modification in response to a design fault, these characteristics can be fairly claimed to set UBH International apart from its competition.