Fabricator Frank Wright, of Warwick Drive, Padiham, blows the fibre on to a mould - the first steps in the manufacture of the new lightweight hot water pipe.

A rubble scarred ex-War Department site festooned with rusty barbed wire seems an unlikely place for the development of space-age products. But it is here, on the outskirts of Padiham, that the La Brecque Engineering Co., Ltd., are evolving new techniques to create a minor revolution in gas, water, electrical, sewage and chemical industries. Already plastic fabrications produced in the modest, redeveloped premises are replacing traditional metal and clay mouldings in fields as far apart as domestic plumbing and nuclear power plants. The firm has produced a complex of transparent PVX pipework for the construction of a scale model of a cooling water intake at a nuclear power station at Hinkley Point to facilitate visual investigation of flow patterns.

It is less than a year since the company set up at Pollard Moor, Padiham. Mr Derek Turner, works manager, said: "We moved from the Midlands, where there was insufficient room for expansion, to this site last July with five key workers." Existing buildings were renovated, extended and adapted to suit the needs of La Brecque, a subsidiary of the Hepworth Iron Co., of Hazelhead, Stocksbridge - who also own J. Duckett and Son Ltd., Burnley, East Lancashire Fireclay Co., Towneley and F. Temperley, Bacup - and Hepworth-Polva Plastics, who manufacture pipes. Now the labour force has risen to 56, all recruited locally, and this figure will be doubled by next year. The firm has also chalked up a success in the development of the supply of North Sea natural gas by producing pipes and couplings for one booster station at Elstree, and orders are in hand for a similar project. The electricity board is also benefiting from another of the La Brecque ideas, a plastic cover for transformers. The other products from the Padiham factory include syphon heads for sewage pumping stations, fume cupboards such as those they installed at Lancaster University laboratories, and water storage tanks for new multistorey schools.