Cokebusters International

10/06/2026

Construction is now underway on our new Americas Operations Centre in Houston, Texas and this photo marks a moment we've been working towards for a long time!

When John Phipps founded Cokebusters in Chester in 2005, Houston wasn't yet part of the picture. The Operations Centre in Texas came seven years later, established to serve a growing client base across North and South America.

Since then it has grown steadily in capability, in headcount and in ambition.

This building will mark the beginning of the next chapter.

The new Americas Operations Centre will give our Houston team the facility they deserve. It has been thoughtfully designed to support the full scope of Cokebusters' mechanical cleaning and inline inspection services across the continent.

The new site will offer more space, better infrastructure and a permanent home for a team that has long outgrown its current one.

Twenty one years after a small specialist company was founded in the north of England, the foundations are (quite literally!) being laid for the next decade.

We'll keep you posted as the build progresses 🏗️

08/06/2026

Before there was Cokebusters, there was this.

We recently came across this old cutting from an industry magazine and spotted a familiar face!

That's our founder John Phipps, pictured on site at the Esso Fawley refinery back in 1997. It was in that year that John found premises at Hawarden Airfield near Chester UK.

The Armoury Building hadn’t been occupied since the Royal Air Force left in 1957, but it was given a new life. Alongside the cluster of factories where all the Airbus wings are manufactured, the site was and is ideal for pushing the boundaries of technology.

At the time, John was leading the European and Middle Eastern operations of Canadian specialist pigging company, Hydro Kleen. He was overseeing a pioneering mechanical cleaning contract for the Xylenes Project. 700 metres of line was cleaned in three weeks in a service delivered within budget, on schedule and without safety incident.

The headline speaks for itself!

Mechanical cleaning was in its infancy back then and it was this period that gave John the experience, the contacts and the conviction to found Cokebusters in 2005.

Nearly thirty years on from that job at Fawley, the technology has changed considerably, but the standards and commitment to innovation have not.

04/06/2026

The ongoing conflict in the Middle East is having consequences for the energy sector that don't always make the headlines.

Planned maintenance programmes are being deferred, assets are running beyond their scheduled intervention windows and the backlog is building.

As a specialist service provider operating across the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, we are close to this situation. What we are observing on the ground is worth sharing.

So we've written about it... the parallels with the COVID era, the cost of deferral, and what a credible path forward looks like for operators managing assets through a period of prolonged uncertainty.

It's a practical piece, not a political one and we think it's relevant to anyone responsible for asset integrity in the current environment.

Read the full article via the link below:
https://cokebusters.com/regional-conflict-and-international-maintenance-management/

Regional conflict is driving deferred maintenance across the global energy sector. Cokebusters examines the consequences for hydrocarbon asset integrity and what operators should be doing now.

02/06/2026

What you can't see won't hurt you, right?
Unfortunately not.

Whether it's coke deposits building up in fired heater tubes or limescale accumulating in process piping, the impact follows the same pattern - reduced flow, increased energy consumption, falling efficiency and eventually, unplanned downtime.

The problem is rarely dramatic at first: a fouled tube still functions and a scaled line still flows. But the performance loss is cumulative and by the time it can no longer be ignored, the cost is already significant.

There's a secondary risk that's easy to overlook. Heavy fouling can mask what's happening to the tube or pipe wall beneath it. Corrosion, wall thinning and pitting can develop unseen behind a layer of coke or scale, meaning an asset that appears to be functioning may already be compromised.

Regularly cleaning addresses the operational impact and inspection addresses the integrity question.

Done together, these services give operators a complete picture and the confidence to make informed decisions about what comes next.

That's precisely why Cokebusters has always offered this combined service under one roof.

When did your assets last receive a combined clean and inspection?

Find out more about our combined cleaning and inspection service at cokebusters.com 🔧

20/05/2026

Every Cokebusters deployment runs on equipment we own, build and maintain ourselves.

That's a deliberate choice and one which has defined how we operate since 2005.

Our bespoke Double Pumping Units are the backbone of every mechanical cleaning and combined service job we carry out. They generate the hydraulic power that drives our pigs through tubes and pipelines and their reliability on site is non-negotiable. A pump failure mid-job isn't just inconvenient, it costs our client time and money they haven't budgeted for.

Which is why we don't outsource our machinery.

Every DPU in the Cokebusters fleet is designed and manufactured in-house, tested on our own test loop at our UK Technology Centre in Chester and maintained to the same standard between every deployment, whether it's heading to a refinery in Texas or a petrochemical facility in the Middle East.

The four images here tell that story. From workshop construction to test loop validation, from transit to on-site operation - the journey a DPU takes before it reaches your facility is as considered as the job itself.

Fleet investment isn't always glamorous, but it's what reliability looks like in practice.

07/05/2026

These days every company has "values", but not every company lives by them.

'The CB Way' isn't just a mission statement on a wall. It's a set of behaviours that show up in how we work with each other and with our clients.

In practice, it looks like this:

• An operator who takes the same care on a routine job as he does on a complex one, because the standard doesn't change based on the size of the contract.
• An engineer who flags a concern before it becomes a problem, because integrity matters more than convenience.
• A manager who invests in the right equipment, trains the right people and doesn't cut corners when a shortcut would be easier.

For our clients, 'The CB Way' shows up in reliability:

• Equipment that arrives prepared.
• Teams that are briefed and ready.
• Data that can be trusted.
• A company that picks up the phone when something isn't right.

For our people, it shows up in how we treat each other:

• Promotion from within.
• Investment in development.
• A culture where doing the right thing is expected, not exceptional.

Twenty one years in, these values are as important as they've ever been.

Integrity is at the heart of everything we do.

30/04/2026

When an asset is deemed "unpiggable," it could be a long time before that label is questioned again.

But that label carries a cost... gaps in your integrity programme, risk that can only be estimated rather than quantified and deterioration that goes undetected until it demands a reactive response.

In most cases, the unpiggable designation reflects the limitations of conventional tooling, not physical impossibility. The constraint has been the tool, not the tube or pipe.

In our latest article, we explore what actually happens when operators accept the label and why it may be time to revisit those assets previously written off from the inspection regime.

🔗 Read it here: https://cokebusters.com/what-happens-when-you-apply-the-unpiggable-label/

If you have pipelines or process tubing sitting outside your integrity programme, get in touch. We'd welcome the opportunity to assess whether they still need to be.

Accepting the 'unpiggable' label carries real consequences for integrity programmes, risk registers and long-term asset costs. Find out why the label is worth challenging.

28/04/2026

Finding a defect is only useful if you know precisely where it is.

An inline inspection tool that detects wall loss but can't tell you exactly where to cut or intervene hasn't really solved the problem.

Axial positioning - knowing the exact location of every reading along the length of a pipeline - is what turns inspection data into actionable intelligence. And for applications where that precision is critical, we offer a dedicated odometer solution.

Launched just last year, our Odometer System is a modular enhancement to our compact Smart Pig, replacing the rear brush section with a lightweight precision assembly. Spring-loaded arms with rubber-tread wheels track distance continuously throughout the run, with triple cross-verification logic ensuring positional accuracy at every point.

The result is a fully position-referenced integrity map with every ultrasonic wall thickness reading tied to an exact axial location.

We know how much precision matters when planning intervention. Which is why we offer our clients:
- pinpoint intervention rather than guesswork
- meaningful trend analysis over time
- integration into digital integrity databases and risk-based inspection programmes

Because inspection without accurate positioning is a map without coordinates.

22/04/2026

The Smart Pig you see on site is only part of the story.

Behind it is a team of engineers who are dedicated to making sure it performs every time.

The Cokebusters Technology Department is led by Nick Bettley and brings together a range of disciplines that you might not expect to find in a specialist inspection company of our size.

Dr. Chris Peyton leads our NDT research and development - working on ultrasonic tool performance, probability of detection and the design of our next generation of intelligent pigs. His work began with a Knowledge Transfer Partnership with the University of Strathclyde and is validated on our bespoke test loop in Chester.

Hongyu You joined through our second KTP project, applying machine learning to ultrasonic signal interpretation - improving the accuracy of wall thickness measurements and accelerating data analysis. This is the kind of capability that puts better information in the hands of asset integrity teams faster.

Felipe Alchieri brings electrical engineering expertise to the team, keeping the electronics and control systems inside our tools performing to specification. And William Pickard handles the mechanical and design side - translating engineering requirements into tools that actually work in the field.

Four disciplines. One team. All focused on the same thing - making sure that when a Cokebusters Smart Pig runs down a tube or pipeline, it comes back with data you can trust.

20/04/2026

Inline inspection is only as good as the data it produces.

A tool that passes through a pipeline but misses defects doesn't give you a reliable inspection. It gives you a false sense of security.

'Sampling density' is the number of ultrasonic readings taken per metre of pipeline and it is one of the most important and least discussed factors in inspection quality.

The further apart those readings are, the greater the chance that something significant falls between them.

The Cokebusters Smart Pig takes 60,000 ultrasonic readings per metre.

That level of density isn't accidental. It's the result of deliberate engineering decisions around sensor configuration, tool speed and data capture - developed and validated on our bespoke test loop at our UK Technology Centre in Chester before the tool ever reaches your site.

The practical outcome is a C-scan that gives your asset integrity team the confidence to make informed decisions.

No assumptions or estimates, just evidence.

Contact our team today to find out more about how our world-class inspection technology tools can support you.