Since the invention of the wheel, engineers have been struggling to make rotary motion more efficient.

A technical breakthrough that maintains the traditions of this vital – if unglamorous – endeavour has in the past few years given an impetus to sales at AESseal, a Rotherham-based company that is among the UK’s leading mid-sized engineering businesses.

It has also provided the company with a Queen’s award for innovation – one of four it has won this year and the 11th the business has gained since 1988.

AESseal was set up in 1983 by Chris Rea, a Northern Ireland-born economist who is managing director and owns 60 per cent of the business.

It is the world’s fourth biggest maker of mechanical seals – devices based on metal and plastics that prevent liquids leaking from pumps and other rotating machinery used in industrial installations such as chemical works or cement plants.

The new device – which the company invented in 2005 after a £250,000 development programme – has taken it into the business of bearing protection devices.

Separate from the field of mechanical seals, bearing protectors stop water or dirt infiltrating the industrial bearings that are found in their billions in virtually every kind of mechanism that relies in rotary motion, from cars to washing machines.

“We are selling bearing protectors in much the same way as McDonald’s sells happy meals,” says Alan Roddis, engineering director and leader of the team that developed the device.

“We already have a good reputation among customers who buy our mechanical seals to make their pumps and other similar equipment more reliable.

“Now we have started to make inroads into the market for doing the same thing for the bearings that these customers also operate in large quantities in their industrial systems.

“Just as McDonald’s is trying to add a drink and fries to customers’ orders when they buy a hamburger, we feel we have a good chance of persuading the people who buy our seals to invest in bearing protection too.”

The staple device used in the engineering industry to stop contaminants entering the innards of industrial bearings – normally consisting of rollers or balls encased by a metal band and with oil used as a lubricant – is a product called a lip seal.

Lip seals normally cost less than £10. They use a simple seal based on rubber or a similar material to prevent fine particulates or liquids from entering the bearing chamber.

However, the rubber commonly wears out over time, which can lead to big problems with contamination. This can cause the bearing to seize up, with potentially disastrous consequences for the machinery it is being used inside.

AESseal’s bearing protectors are fairly expensive ,at about £80 each. They use a system of two metal discs sandwiched together to stop materials entering the innards of the bearing, both when the bearing is in motion, and when it is at rest.

The capital outlay for the bearing protector – which AESseal calls LabTecta – might seem a lot, especially when the cost of the bearing itself in an installation such as a steel mill or effluent plant might be only about £40.

“That’s not how a lot of our customers see things,” explains Mr Roddis.

“If a plant stops working because a bearing has suffered from contamination, then the costs of the down time can run to tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds.

“We believe our new range of bearing protectors will appeal to many companies that want to see their equipment run at higher levels of reliability.”

Last year, revenues of AESseal came to £77m, with about 70 per cent from outside the UK. About 5 per cent of sales came from the company’s new line of bearing protectors.

However, Mr Roddis wants the figure to grow to about 15 per cent of sales within the next three years to fit in with the company’s aim of becoming the world leader in the niche of mechanical bearing protectors over the same period.

This niche – which does not include lip seals – had total sales last year estimated at only about £50m. The number one company is US-based Inpro, with AESseal in second position.

AESseal has a network of roughly 70 sales offices around the world in 30 or so countries and the company aims to sell its bearing devices using the same staff who handle its better known seals products.

With most of its manufacturing based in the UK – as well as about 400 of its 1,200-strong staff – the company has recently opened two plants in China and India to cater for what it hopes will be strong demand for its products in Asia over the next decade.