Interview with Claire Williams, Donut Safety Systems

For Donut Safety Systems, the work has never really been about the equipment. The British company has spent nearly four decades on one demanding specialism, personal controlled descent for emergency escape, and built its business on the relationships that follow the sale. When the time came to think about ownership, what mattered most was finding an owner who understood that and had no interest in changing it. In Bergman & Beving it found one.

Donut Safety Systems designs and supplies personal controlled descent systems for emergency escape, used across some of the most demanding offshore and onshore environments there are, from offshore platforms and cranes to cruise ships. Based in Aberdeen, the company has spent close to forty years becoming known for escape-to-sea solutions offshore, the kind of work that puts it in the room with senior health and safety decision-makers who have a real problem to solve.

The relationship is the business

What sets Donut apart is less the product than the way it thinks about the responsibility behind it. When a controlled descent system is installed on a platform or a ship, someone is accountable for making sure it works when it matters most, and in this world there is no margin for error. Generalist suppliers are set up to fulfil orders, send the equipment and move on. Donut has never worked that way. For the company the sale is only the beginning, and the training and inspection servicing that follows, delivered directly or through trusted global partners held to the same standard, is where the real value of the relationship lives.

“The personal descender device is the entry point. The relationship is the business,” says Claire Williams.

That outlook shapes who the company brings in. It starts with integrity, which in safety-critical work is non-negotiable, and from there a balance that is harder to find, people who respect what nearly four decades of customer trust has built but carry the restless curiosity to ask whether there is a better way to serve a customer or reach a new market. Culture ties it all together, the lived reality of how people treat each other, their customers and the responsibility the work carries.

Finding the right home

For all that strength, the honest constraint before Bergman & Beving was not the market or the product. It was the pace the company was willing to move at. A change in ownership and leadership focus has shifted that, and the conversation now is about building to grow while honouring the legacy and reputation that nearly four decades have earned.

Donut was built by a family, and when the time came to pass it on the most important question was never only about value. It was whether what they had built would be respected, protected and taken forward. Bergman & Beving stood out because it understood exactly that. Where some acquirers buy businesses like Donut and immediately look for synergies that dilute the specialism, B&B’s approach is the opposite, to acquire specialist businesses with strong positions and genuine expertise and give them the platform to grow without dismantling what made them good. Talking to other leaders already running businesses within the group, before the deal completed, helped make an unfamiliar model feel like the right one.

“They buy businesses for the lifetime of the business, not to integrate, not to extract, not to flip,” says Claire Williams.

The founding family could step back knowing the legacy was secure, and new leadership could carry the business forward with the backing and stability to grow. Leaders keep the freedom to run their own businesses while gaining real opportunities to share knowledge and learn from others, rather than being folded into a central structure for its own sake. Through all of it, Donut stayed Donut.