Customer support of the 'highest' order
Customer support is one of the keys to the continuing success of the A&J Fabtech business, so when one of our long-time clients asked for our help in reaching his goal, we were happy to back him all the way to the top.

The customer in question was Phil Purdey, a member of the purchasing team at Yorkshire Water. His goal – the successful ascent of the world’s 6th highest mountain, Cho Oyu.

The summit of Cho Oyu stands at 8201m in the heart of the Himalyas, just 20km from Mt Everest on the border between China and Nepal. First conquered in 1954 the mountain may well be considered the easiest technical climb of the world’s 8000m peaks to climb but the ascent enters into the ‘death zone’, the altitude where the amount of available oxygen present in the air is roughly one third of that at sea level and insufficient to sustain life. Serious in anybody’s book and certainly not for the faint-hearted!

Aside from the personal physical and mental challenge of climbing Cho Oyu, the main drive behind the expedition for Phil Purdey and his climbing partners was to raise £100,000 for the Cancer Research charity.

The team departed from the UK on August 22nd for Kathmandu taking some sixteen days to reach Cho Oyu base camp, gradually acclimatising to the altitude along the way. Following further acclimatisation and exploratory climbs on the lower reaches of the mountain, Phil Purdey, Jeff Crooke and Peter Bailey successfully reached the summit of Cho Oyu on Thursday 24th September 2009.

Our congratulations to Phil and everyone involved in the successful expedition and our thanks to them for literally putting A&J ‘on top of the world’.