The prestigious award recognises Oliver Valvetek’s in-house Face Seal innovation for subsea gate valves, an engineering development designed to improve valve performance, reliability and long-term confidence in extreme subsea environments.
The King’s Award for Enterprise is one of the UK’s highest official business honours, celebrating outstanding achievement by British businesses. For Oliver Valvetek, the recognition marks its third Royal Award and the fourth achieved across the Oliver family of companies.
Nick Howard has played a key role in the engineering development behind the award-winning innovation, working alongside Oliver Valvetek’s UK-based research and development team to deliver a practical solution to a critical subsea sealing challenge.
At the heart of the award is a new Face Seal arrangement for Oliver Valvetek’s subsea gate valves. Developed entirely in-house, the design replaces a conventional spring-energised lip seal with a simpler, one-piece PEEK polymer seal.
Unlike traditional sealing arrangements, the Face Seal uses system pressure to strengthen the sealing effect. As operating pressure increases, the seal becomes more effective, supporting greater reliability in high-pressure subsea applications where failure is not an option.
The innovation has been qualified for working pressures from 5,000 psi to 20,000 psi and simulated water depths of up to 4,000 metres. It has also helped Oliver Valvetek strengthen in-house manufacturing capability, improve quality control, simplify assembly and reduce reliance on external suppliers.
Speaking after the reception, Nick Howard, Engineering Director at Oliver Valvetek, said:
“Meeting His Majesty The King at St James’s Palace was a tremendous honour and a very proud moment, not just for me personally, but for everyone involved in this achievement.
“The King’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation recognises a huge amount of engineering work, testing and practical problem-solving from our team here in the UK. The Face Seal development is a great example of innovation with a clear purpose, improving performance and reliability for customers operating in some of the most demanding subsea environments in the world.”
The award further strengthens Oliver Valvetek’s reputation as a trusted specialist in subsea valve engineering, with a long history of supplying critical valve solutions for offshore energy applications around the world.
It also reflects the continued commitment to British engineering, in-house technical expertise, and long-term investment in research, development and manufacturing.
The formal presentation of the King’s Award will take place in September, providing another opportunity to celebrate the achievement with the wider Oliver Valvetek team.
