A QUARTET of school pupils have come up with an innovative design for a new kind of industrial pallet which is set to be made into a prototype by a trailer maker.

The Denbigh High School students won a top prize in a national engineering competition after creating the design from scratch in just a month.

Charlie Williams, Evan Thomas, Thomas Davies, all aged 17, and Cai Frith, 16, are all in Year 12, studying for A-levels at Denbigh High School.

Inspiration for the idea grew out of the partnership between their school and North Wales company Ifor Williams Trailers (IWT) which exports globally.

READ MORE:

Trial use of Plas Madoc recycling centre by Llangollen residents

Inquest held into death of man at aqueduct

Manufactured at its six factories in Denbighshire and Flintshire, the Ifor Williams Trailers range is sold across the UK and Europe, and as far afield as Australia and New Zealand.

If the prototype stands up to tests and reaches a future production stage, it is possible the boys design could also travel across the world.

The four young innovators credited their product design teacher, Thomas Turner, with helping them achieve their success.

Cai said: “Our tutor is brilliant. He definitely motivated us to produce the best design we possibly could.

“We didn’t only want it to be competition standard, we wanted it to be good enough to convince Ifor Williams that it has real potential.”

The team spent many hours creating and modifying their design before entering it into an annual Engineering Education Scheme Wales competition for schools across the nation.

The competition asks entrants to design solutions to real engineering problems faced.

Rival schools who entered the competition had six months to work on their designs, while the Denbigh sixth formers had only four weeks.

Manufacturing project engineer James said everyone at Ifor Williams Trailers was hugely impressed with the boys’ ingenuity and enthusiasm for the task.

He said: “We’re all thrilled for them. They really deserved to win this award, they put so much thought and innovation into the task.

“They show great potential and have promising careers ahead. This was not an easy project but they showed great problem-solving skills and worked so well together as a team.”

As part of the project, the team went on a site visit to Ifor Williams Trailers where they were set specific targets and functions to incorporate in their design, including working out how to overcome some of the problems which can beset more conventional forms of pallet.

The boys said visiting the factory was an eye-opener and it was great to witness a top professional engineering team in their workplace.

Charlie said: “Ifor Williams are the best in the business with a global reputation, so it was a brilliant chance for us to meet their engineers and we definitely learned a lot from them. In the end we felt we were really lucky, not many school groups get to work with such a world class manufacturer.”