About Us

Smiths Environmental Techniques Ltd (SET Ltd) was the brainchild of Tony Smith.

Our story is slightly different to most as the founder of our company, Tony Smith, is no longer with us; we lost Tony to Pancreatic Cancer after he had battled with the disease for more than two years.

It was Tony’s strength, determination, energy and lust for life that kept him with us for that amount of time.

Originally from Berkshire, Tony completed an apprenticeship in aero-nautics at Farnborough College of Technology; he always had a passion for engineering and an inquisitive mind regarding how things worked.  This presented itself in many ways over the years from taking his Fathers lawn mower apart when he was a child to designing and developing specialist extreme temperature camera systems for Birds Eye, cameras systems for Jordan Grand Prix and individual underwater camera systems that were used on record breaking voyages across the Atlantic Ocean and programmes for the National Geographic Channel.

When living in Berkshire Tony worked for EG&G as a Field Technician in the offshore industry and it was whilst working in the North Sea on a French boat off the Norwegian coast that Tony met Les Ford, this meeting developed into a friendship and business relationship that truly stood the test of time.

In the mid-seventies Tony then moved to Suffolk and started working for Techmation, who were based in Great Yarmouth.

Les Ford was also based in Great Yarmouth, then working for Ferranti and he was able to contract out any encapsulating and moulding work to Tony.

Les later went on to start Sonar Equipment Services and Tony, realising that there was a market for cable moulding, started his own company too. Tony and Les, through their friendship, helped each other build their respective businesses, both gaining respectability throughout the offshore industry.

In 1988 Tony started SET from his garage, as a one man business he developed his own design for cable moulding, which he then took to companies in Great Yarmouth specialising in the offshore industry and built up strong relationships, many of which continue to this day.

Smiths Environmental Techniques became a limited company in 2001 and over the years Tony created a number of sister companies that worked alongside SET.  Some of these allowed Tony to immerse himself into the camera side of things, developing and designing camera systems for use in various fields, always with extreme environments in mind.  The camera business was built solely from Tony’s passion and expertise, however when he became ill, sadly there was no-one else with the knowledge to take this on.

From 2005, when Tony was diagnosed, less time was able to be spent in the workshop but Philip, our workshop manager, stepped into the breach, the less Tony was able to do then Philip gradually took it out of his hands.  Tony’s hard work over many years built SET into a well reputed company; known for fulfilling orders in short lead times whilst upholding the quality of workmanship that SET Ltd Lowestoft has always been known for.  Philip has continued to build the business and along with the current workshop team they have maintained our reputation to this day; taking any necessary steps to make sure goods are delivered to customers on time.