KEEPING the more 'gory' side of industry going may not be the most glamorous job in the world, but for staff at one firm in Whitchurch it's the most important thing in the world.

Landia, based on the Waymills Industrial Estate is the UK office of a Danish firm that specialise in making bespoke pumps and mixers for the agriculture, wastewater, biogas and the fish industry.

Quite often, a Landia pump can be found in some of the most unpleasant places, such as slurry pits, sludge plants and fish choppers.

The plant in Whitchurch serves as the company's UK sales office as well as serving as a base to repair and maintain pumps, something it has done for the last 25 years.

Senior technical engineer at Landia, Tony Challinor, has been working for the firm for 13 years, and explained a little bit about what goes on behind the scenes.

"We like to say we're the most premium. Other companies are more expensive but Landia's been making pumps since 1933 so there's a lot of experience," said Tony.

"A lot of companies go through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) but we like to think we're a bit old school."

Landia's pumps can be found around the world, everywhere from small farms to large scale biogas plants and the company has offices in Europe, Asia and most recently, north America.

"We're the first subsidiary outside of Denmark. Our fleet travels all the way from the south coast to the north coast. We'll go all over essentially," explained Tony.

"On average we move between 15 and 20 pumps per month, but sometimes you might get a project like we had in Malaysia that took 30 pumps in one order."

Tony explained that the company's pumps are bespoke, not using off the shelf parts, but this can sometimes lead to large waits between placing a quote for a pump and the sale actually taking place.

"Quite often you might get a quote in January that wont make it through until July," he added.

Being a Danish company also has its own unique benefits according to Tony, with the grass not always being greener on the other side.

"We follow the Danish mindset here. I've been here 13 years now and our most valuable asset is our employees," added Tony.

"We very rarely lose employees and when we do, they come back.

"Anybody can pump water, but pumping [excrement] is a lot more difficult. There's a little bit of witchcraft involved."