Mark Herring, 52, is the proprietor of Elite Stainless Fabrications, which recently donated a £3,000 microbrewery kit as a raffle prize to Swindon Women’s Aid, where his partner, Karen Jacklin, is a volunteer. The father-of-three lives in Park South

TONIGHT in parts of Switzerland, France, Scandinavia and various other corners of the globe, certain people will raise glasses of carefully-crafted beer made to carefully-crafted recipes.

The same goes for certain people across this country in places as diverse as Tyne and Wear, Macclesfield, Cambridge, Lincolnshire, Salisbury, Basingstoke, Glasgow and Liverpool.

Some drinkers, the type who relish the exotic, will raise their glasses in locations nowhere near the places where the contents were brewed.

What all have in common, though separated by hundreds or thousands of miles, is that their ales started life in a Westlea industrial unit.

Elite Stainless Fabrications is one of those Swindon success stories few have heard about because it hardly has to advertise.

“We make pretty much anything in stainless steel,” said Mark Herring. “We do a little bit of aluminium as well, but it’s mainly stainless steel.

“We always worked for the big breweries many years ago – your Courages, your Scottish and Newcastles, Taunton Cider, Bulmers, people like that – but we only did, say, a vessel or a pipework installation.

“We never actually did a full brewery system. We also used to do a lot of work for the British aerospace industry, the food industry, pharmaceuticals, all that sort of thing.

“Going back six or seven years ago we were doing a lot for a company in Dorcan, Magnaflux, and they decided to shut their manufacturing down and send it to Germany.

“At the time, that was pretty much 80 or 85 per cent of our work.

“So basically I made a small microbrewery for somebody, a little one on a stand. He put it on to one of the home brew forums and it went absolutely mad – and I mean mad.

“Now, if I’m perfectly honest, probably 98 per cent of our work is brewery stuff.”

The firm has three full-time staff – Mark, partner Karen and brother Terry. Another brother, Ray, has a nearby unit and occasionally lends his own metalworking skills.

Mark is Swindon-born and bred, and at Churchfields School excelled at woodwork, metalwork and other subjects involving construction and precision.

Later he worked for several major Swindon firms. He is proud of Swindon’s engineering history and anxious to see the tradition continue.

He also believes that local companies should never lose sight of the fact that they are part of the wider community, which is why he was delighted to supply the microbrewery kit to raise funds for Swindon Women’s Aid.

“We wanted to put a little bit back in. We do several things for different small charities, which is why we donated the system.”

Mark relishes the company’s shift to making brewing equipment as opposed to components.

“With this you see a finished item at the end, ready to produce what it was designed to produce. We always get some nice pictures sent back.

Some of those pictures and reports come from surprisingly distant places.

“We’ve got one in the Falkland Islands. He came to us – he was a small brewer. He’s got what we call a two-and-a-half barrel unit. We had to drop it at Bristol. I think he’s a pub that’s put a small brewery in the back.

“We’ve got one that went to Lima in Peru. That was about two, two-and-a-half years ago. Again, they came and picked it up and shipped it off to Peru. We’ve actually got one of the hundred-litre units in Australia – it was a bloke who was working in Ireland.

“He bought it from us, shipped it across to Ireland and then, with his job, he was moving back to Australia, and he took it with him."

“I’ve actually got some beermats with his logo.”

Most customers are part of the ongoing explosion in the popularity of craft beers, which has seen more ales brewed by small manufacturers or on-site at pubs. Other customers include major brewers who use the equipment to test new ideas.

The Swindon firm’s kits take the process through every stage from the heating of water through the adding of malt, hops and yeast to the final product.

The smallest might fit into a reasonably-sized garage and brew 350 perhaps litres per week, although with space for extra fermenters such a unit running flat out could produce many times that volume.

“A lot of people start in their garages,” said Mark. “They’re home brewers, they get a kit, play for six months, or 18 months sometimes, come back here and say, ‘Everyone wants our beer – can I get a big one off you now?’

“It’s fantastic the way it’s gone in the last 10 years, the weird and wonderful things they’re putting into beers now. There are some amazing beers.”

His advice to anybody with an idea for a business of their own?

He believes it is better to try than to avoid trying and risk ending up wondering what might have been.

“Times are a little bit difficult at the moment with interest rates, with the banks, with the price of premises and that sort of thing, but if you’ve got a good idea and a good product, and there’s a market for the product, then weigh up the options and give it a try.”