The origins of LMK Thermosafe Ltd go back to the early 1980’s when Malcolm Rackind founded LMK Engineering Ltd at a shared business centre in Hindley, Wigan.
Mr. Rackind had been leading the prototype development of an induction drum heater for a project with BP Chemicals to safely heat their “Hyvis” PIB polybutenes (now “Indopol”). He was running a business making heating platens for the moulding industry but purchased the rights and prototypes from the business in July 1984 in order to establish LMK Engineering Ltd and focus on the commercialisation of the THERMOSAFE Induction Heater. A British Patent was applied for and granted shortly afterwards.
The original development required certification for use in flammable (potentially explosive) atmospheres, and this was achieved through testing at the Health & Safety Executive’s BASEEFA lab in March 1986, with the new product announced at the Eurochem exhibition in June 1986. Successful proving trials were conducted early that year at Adshead Ratcliffe in Belper, (now ARBO). The original heater continues to be used, alongside newer ones purchased in the 2010’s and 2020’s as their factory expanded its manufacture of sealants and intumescent strips.
Manufacturing and HQ was moved to a small industrial unit in Woodford Green in the late 1980’s with expansion to new premises in Harlow, Essex following in the early 1990’s. Customers around the globe started to purchase THERMOSAFE® upon recommendations by the major multinational corporations that had found good success replacing their old drum ovens or steam blanket systems to heat liquids or melt solids in steel drums.
In August 2000, Malcolm Rackind retired from the business, selling to Mark Newton, a Professional Electrical Engineer with experience growing technical businesses worldwide.
The Company now has wholly owned subsidiaries in USA (Thermosafe Technologies LLC, dba Inteliheat, located in Dallas, Texas) and China (Inteliheat Chengdu) plus Distributors and recognised sales partners in most industrialised countries around the globe. Operations are run by a wider Board of Directors reflecting continuing growth into broader industrial surface heating markets, well beyond the original narrow focus on 200 litre (55 US gallon) steel drum heaters.
With significant new product development ongoing and increased export sales, LMK Thermosafe Ltd was delighted to be awarded the prestigious “Queens Award for International Trade” in 2012 and this export success has continued as a strong part of our overall business growth.
A number of UK and International Patents have been awarded for our innovative products, including the highly successful FARATHERMTM Induction Base Heater and the versatile ProxAtexTM Hazardous Area Certified Digital Temperature Controller.
Since 2015 we have been supplying our North American clients with products fully certified to relevant UL and CSA standards, whether for ordinary location applications, or the stringent requirements of C1D2 and C1Z1 potentially explosive atmospheres.
We are now able to advise on the applicability of our C1Z1 products where older C1D1 ratings are specified, and offer suitably approved products from across our range to original equipment manufacturers around the world, whether exporting their machinery outside their own territories or supplying local clients.
Our THERMOSAFE® Induction Heater continues to be the gold standard against which others are compared, with an impressive quality and performance history that is unsurpassed. Not a single induction heater coil has failed to date in over 35 years of operation, and it continues to demonstrate impressive energy efficiency coupled with exceptional speed when heating or melting the contents of mild steel drums.
All products continue to be manufactured and tested at our highly automated ISO9001 certified factories in Haverhill, Suffolk, but standard heaters are always available from our warehouse facilities in USA, EU and Australia. The Company has also enhanced its supply chains so that most non-standard designs can be built and shipped within a few weeks of client approval.
In 2025 work on an expansion of our UK factory space was begun, to permit the addition of further automated equipment, enhancing the scope of our non-standard product offerings.
THERMOSAFE ®, FARATHERM®, PROXATEX® are variously Registered Trade Marks of LMK Thermosafe Ltd in UK, Europe, USA and elsewhere.
