A fuel-saving firm is driving through the downturn by landing a licensing deal which looks set to treble turnover and boost the county’s reputation for innovation.

Award-winning Oil Drum, based in Sittingbourne and Canterbury, has won plaudits for pioneering technology that saves haulage companies around 10 per cent of its fuel consumption with a unique device fitted to truck or bus. It also cuts CO2 emissions and cuts hydrocarbons to zero.

Now it has won a licensing deal that, with other international deals in the pipeline, is set to take Oil Drum’s sales from £1.4m to around £5m over the next 12 months.

The winner of last year’s Kent Innovation Challenge has a reasearch and development operation at Canterbury Enterprise Hub and was helped by experts at the University of Kent, which owns a 10 per cent stake in the company.

Oil Drum’s main challenge was producing enough Save-Fuel devices to meet soaring demand from haulage chiefs, especially when fuel costs were rising steeply, while continuing with R&D on other projects, including a device for cars.

The new deal gives Huddersfield-based Andel Group the right to exclusively manufacture, sell and install the Save-Fuel hydrogen technology for the UK commercial vehicle market.

With 440,000 trucks of more than 3.5 tonnes in the UK and 4.7m large trucks in the United States alone, there is huge potential for Oil Drum to become one of Kent’s biggest business successes.

Darryl Watts, founder and managing director of Oil Drum, said: "By working with Andel Group we will be able to dramatically increase the manufacture of the Save-Fuel device which has been incredibly well received by many hard-pressed freight and commercial vehicle operators.

"Fuel prices may have fallen from their high during the summer, but with the economy taking a significant downturn, commercial vehicle operators are increasingly looking at ways to reduce costs which is why the Save-Fuel product is proving very popular."

Andel Group’s Managing Director, Ian Pogson, said: "The Save-Fuel product is an excellent example of innovation, taking a 200 year old technology to tackle a major contemporary issue, in this case fuel efficiency. It’s well designed, well engineered and it has been well received by the industry."

Vertex Law, the commercial law firm based at Kings Hill, West Malling, drew up the licence agreement.