A true British manufacturing success story, Parvalux is the UK’s largest fractional horsepower electric motor manufacturer, and are part of the maxon group, with a worldwide network of local offices including the USA.
We have been manufacturing movement since 1947 – with decades of experience and know how in designing and building geared motor solutions for a wide variety of applications.
Our products are often hidden in plain sight, powering wheel chairs, opening doors and much more.
Parvalux Electric Motors Ltd was first established in 1947 by Mr L. Clark in London, E12, where he provided motor rewinds and repairs. The business relocated to Bournemouth on England’s sunny south coast in 1957, where it started designing and manufacturing complete gear-motor units for industrial applications. In 2008, Parvalux acquired Essex-based EMD Drive Systems Ltd. and relocated it to Bournemouth, nearly doubling the company’s turnover in the process.
The Clark Group’s ownership of Parvalux came to an end in December 2018 when maxon motor, the specialist for mechatronic drive systems, acquired the company. We are proudly a maxon company, meaning that we have representation on every continent and the backing of one of the finest technical teams on the planet.
Parvalux drives are found in hundreds of applications, including healthcare, leisure, mobility, transport and a diverse range of industrial applications. With over 75 years’ experience creating motors and gearboxes and we offer thousands of AC, PMDC and BLDC motor options. We can easily customize any motor or gearbox to meet your specifications and do this at no or minimal extra cost.
Founded in 1947, Parvalux is now the UK’s largest fractional horsepower electric motor manufacturer.
In 2018 we joined the maxon group of companies, working in partnership we have sales engineers local to you.
In 2023, Parvalux House opened, bringing together our 3 factories, service centre and offices into one location.
In our UK operation we have experts in a wide variety of disciplines with over 3000 colleagues world wide.
Our values are the driving force and our compass for everything we do: Precision; Customer Focus; Curiosity; Collaboration.
In July 2023, we opened our new factory, the building of which represents the commitment the maxon group has towards the future of Parvalux. We moved our people, machinery and materials from our 3 factories in the area under one roof. Since then our service centre has also relocated bringing together all of our operations.
From the outset the new building was designed to be as environmentally friendly as possible. It has over 1500 panels, which at the time of writing we believe to be one of the largest installations of solar panels on a single building on the south coast of England. These solar panels help to reduce our CO2 emissions by 343 tonnes each year. That is a huge reduction.
The building also has composite panels which have great thermal efficiency and this helps to keep a neutral temperature throughout the year and helps the building achieve an energy rating of -5 A+ which means the building is 5 points better than carbon neutral or net zero.
We are really proud of the facility and the growth opportunity that it represents which will support our expansion to 2030 and beyond.
We’ve been developing our electric motor design process for over 75 years and we’re proud to be considered a trusted provider of drive products to a range of industries, worldwide.
Our pre-manufacture R&D process consists of four key elements:
1. Product design
2. Software systems
3. Prototyping
4. Testing
Utilizing these four elements enables us to design standard, semi-custom and fully customized, bespoke products that are ready for manufacture and long-term deployment. Our team includes some of the brightest engineering minds, who work alongside project managers and product specialists to ensure that Parvalux remains at the cutting edge of electric geared motor design and manufacture.
It’s our willingness and ability to modify our standard motor products, even on small quantity orders, that sets us apart from our competitors. Whether it’s simply adding an encoder to the unit, applying a different coat of paint or designing a completely customized unit from scratch; Parvalux will work with you to meet your geared motor requirements. We offer a wide variety of modifications and accessories for our units and have extensive experience in producing customized designs, whatever the requirement.
Our engineering team designs fully customized geared motor solutions to match your end product’s needs. We design solutions that will match and even exceed your expectations, so you’ll never need to compromise your end product’s look or performance. In addition, we can design and manufacture additional items of your drive chain, in effect, extending your production capabilities.
We design and manufacture electric motors and gearboxes from our production facility in Poole, Dorset on the UK’s beautiful south coast. Our factory provides component production, assembly and testing for each of the products we offer in our AC, DC and brushless product ranges.
The factory utilises semi-automated winding equipment to produce armatures from spindles and laminations wound with copper wire. Motors and gearboxes rely on manual, hand-assembly techniques with the aid of automatic and manual presses. We are setup to manufacture our one-off and low to medium volume production motors across our entire spectrum of range and options. 100% of our complete motor gearbox assemblies are tested in our own dedicated test facility, ensuring each unit leaves us ready for many years’ work. These tested products can be painted in a range of colours and individually packed, with the Dispatch team kept very busy, every day. As volumes increase, small volume production processes adapt accordingly and are handed over the production flow lines in our High-Volume Production team. The facility is run on a lean manufacturing journey that incorporates manufacturing engineering measured against daily production targets.
Our High-Volume teams are responsible for our higher quantity orders with product-specific production line facilities. Those teams operate independent flowlines, each supplied by our in-house winding section and sub-assembly lines. Similarly to the approach to lower volume production, we operate semi-automatic winding machines to produce armatures from spindles and laminations, wound with copper. Our lean methodology journey has begun, with our goal being to create a true Centre of Excellence for winding and assembly of custom designed, application specific, geared motor solutions.
The machine shop is responsible for manufacturing a wide range of different components used in the production of our motors and gearboxes. This includes shafts, machined castings, stators, rotors, and gears (bronze & Delrin) that are later used in the assembly of our geared motor solutions. We are able to produce high-volume, quality components, all within a very short time frame. The components are then tested in our on-site inspection facilities. Utilising equipment such as CNC coordinate measuring machines with automatic optical shaft measurement capabilities, all within dedicated temperature controlled inspection areas, we are able to ensure the quality of every component that we produce. Finished, fully tested components are then used by assembly teams in the production of our geared motor solutions.
Our Quality Management System (QMS) is fully compliant with the requirements of ISO9001:2015 with no exclusions.
Parvalux Electric Motors Limited is committed to continually improving our levels of quality and service. Our electric motor quality management system covers all activities that impact the services we offer to our customers and is fully integrated into our overall business management system, with the objective to uphold the following principles:
As a leading UK manufacturer of electric motors and gearboxes, Parvalux Electric Motors maintains compliance to the following key standards and requirements with regards to electric motor quality:
