Plumber hopes to put the Kibosh on North Sea leaks

Ross Dickinson with one of Kibosh’s prototype industrial clamps.

Ross Dickinson, a self-employed plumber, created Kibosh – a signature pipe repair technology – 14 years ago to provide a quick, but highly effective and robust, fix for damaged or leaking domestic water pipes.

His company, Kibosh Ltd, has secured funding from OGTC, the Aberdeen-based technology centre that helps the oil and gas industry develop and deploy innovative solutions that will accelerate the transition to an affordable net-zero North Sea.

This support, alongside that of its existing investors, will fund pre-field trial testing and certification by BSI.

Ross, who left school aged 16 with no qualifications, was diagnosed with dyslexia years later and prescribed with coloured glasses that helped him to read. He soon gained his plumbing qualifications at Borders College and started his own plumbing business in 2007.

Having spent several years developing and patenting his unique solution, Kibosh’s clamps have gained an international customer base in the professional plumbing, trades and DIY sectors over the last few years.

Ross told us: “It’s been excruciatingly difficult to get to this point, but it’s great now to be working with some of the biggest names in the energy sector to develop Kibosh products for a range of industrial settings.

"I knew pretty early in the process that if we could make the clamps effective for domestic use, we had a really good chance of applying the same basic solution in large-scale engineering and manufacturing environments.

“I’m confident that in working with OGTC and the University of Strathclyde over the next year or so we will be able to develop a range of Kibosh products that will save vast amounts of time, money, and crucially water and other precious fluids for companies in many different sectors over years to come.

"We believe our solutions have the potential to make a positive contribution to the net-zero journey, because these clamps can help save the planet, and the market potential is in the billions of pounds range.”