| Ricardo-AEA | |
| Type: | Limited company |
| Location: | Harwell, Oxfordshire |
| Homepage: | www.ricardo-aea.com |
Ricardo-AEA Ltd, trading as Ricardo Energy & Environment,[1] is a UK-based engineering company. It was formed on November 8, 2012, when Ricardo acquired the business, operating assets and employees of AEA Technology Plc (also known as AEAT and AEA Europe) for £18 million.
At the time, AEA Europe's operational staff numbered around 400, located at five UK sites. After the merger, AEA continue under the leadership of Robert Bell, reporting to Martin Fausset, managing director of Ricardo UK. In 2012, the assets acquired generated annual revenues of £39 million and delivered profit margins similar to those of the rest of the Ricardo group.
AEA Technology plc was an energy and environmental consultancy business, formed in 1996 as the privatised offshoot of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). It was a constituent of the FTSE Fledgling Index. Originally it consisted of divisions with expertise in a wide variety of areas, mostly the products of nuclear-related research. These included nuclear safety, nuclear engineering, environmental protection, battery technology and non-destructive testing. It mainly acted as a contractor organisation for UKAEA and other governmental and private customers.
AEA divested all of the nuclear-related elements of its business, along with other non-core elements such as its rail business, where they had acquired NS Technisch Onderzoek among others .The Dutch branch was later sold and is now called DEKRA Rail BV.[2] The UK branch of the rail business is now called Resonate Group Ltd (previously DeltaRail Group Ltd), having been sold to secondary private equity investment firms.[3] AEA's profitable engineering software business was split into two and sold to Aspen Technology (Hyprotech) and Ansys (CFX).[4]
In addition to environmental consultancy, the company also works in the knowledge transfer[5] and programme management areas. The business is organised around a mesh style "communities" structure which includes knowledge leadership (key technical consultants), project management, IT,[6] marketing and sales.
The company's main UK operations are located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire (head office), London, Risley and Glasgow.
In 2001 a sub-division, EHS Solutions, was created with a remit to build an environment, health and safety software business. It acquired the environmental data management system Monitor-Pro and the health and safety software business Lexware. Significant resource was put into product development, but the market at the time was not sufficiently mature, and in 2006 Monitor-Pro was divested, followed by the former Lexware systems.
AEA Technology was fined £250,000 for transporting a 2.5 tonne 60cobalt gamma radiation source from Cookridge Hospital, Leeds to Sellafield with defective shielding on 11 March 2002.[7] The company is no longer involved in the transportation of nuclear material.
In August 2006, AEA established a Romanian subsidiary in Bucharest (AEA Mediu); this was shut down in April 2009.[8] The company was voted best Consultancy for Climate Change and Renewables in the EDIE Awards 2007.[9]
AEA made 60 redundancies in 2010, reducing its cost base by 10%.[10] The company saw a continuing slump in its share price: from 277p in November 2003 to around 0.4p in January 2012. Shares lost up to one third of their value during 2010 and were even temporarily suspended on the stock exchange.[11] Andrew McCree quit as CEO in November 2011[12] and was replaced by John Lowry as Interim CEO.[13] Lowry had previously been involved in the National Health Service as a restructuring advisor.[14]
AEA Technology went into administration in 2012. Ricardo took on the environmental business and staff. The company's large pension liability, dating from when it was much larger and unsupportable by the small remaining company, was transferred to the UK Government's Pension Protection Fund.
Ricardo-AEA was formed by acquisition of AEA Technology. AEA Technology included a division previously known as the Energy Technology Support Unit (ETSU); many reports published under this name are still in circulation. AEA Technology, for a time, included branding as "Future Energy Solutions (incorporating the Energy Technology Support Unit (ETSU))".[15]
Another former division of AEA Technology was Momenta.[16] This provided services to the public sector, offering services including research management, knowledge transfer, best practice, fund management and behaviour change programmes. Its major programmes included Envirowise for DEFRA and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships for the Technology Strategy Board. Momenta and the Digital Solutions Business (a small IT sub unit) were merged into the rest of AEA in the UK, creating AEA Consulting (an internal name) or AEA Europe.[17]