ESAB - or Elektriska Svetsnings-AktieBolaget (which is Swedish for “Electric Welding Limited Company”) could be thought of as the place where modern welding began. The company was founded in Gothenburg in 1904 by Oscar Kjellberg. He was the engineer who invented the world's first coated welding electrode, the first practical solution to brittle, porous, air-contaminated arc welds. ESAB has now spent more than 120 years solving welding problems and creating welding products. Nowadays, it is in nearly 150 countries: one of the world's largest manufacturers of welding and cutting equipment, filler metals and PPE. It's the brand behind most of the high-performance welding helmets we sell here at Weldtech.
A Century of Welding Innovation
ESAB has an enviable record of innovations, from the coated electrode in 1904, they then solved the problem of porous, brittle welds that held early arc welding back. Submerged arc welding for heavy metal plate (SAW, where the arc is submerged under a blanket of granular flux on the workbench) was the next solution in 1937, TIG was taken up in 1944, and MIG followed in 1950.
ESAB was at the forefront of making three of the four arc processes used in every UK fabrication shop today practical and affordable. Plasma cutting arrived in 1955. Innovation continued. Rebel multi-process machines, the Renegade range and the Sentinel welding helmet line are all recent proof that the company still designs for working welders first.
How ESAB Become Big in the UK: The Roots are Deeper Than You'd Think
ESAB's British story starts in 1912, just eight years after
the company was founded, when the Anglo-Swedish Electric Welding Company opened in London. The UK operation began in 1933 and trades today as ESAB Group (UK) Ltd from Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire. This makes ESAB one of the longest continuously operating welding supplies and equipment companies in Britain.
Why Waltham Cross you may ask. It was the home of Murex, a British welding consumables maker founded in 1909. Their rods and equipment welded ships from the Ark Royal to the QE2. Murex was absorbed by ESAB, along with the electrode factories and that welding heritage. The UK arm of ESAB stands on a century of UK welding history, and Murex consumables are still popular today.
The UK contribution to ESAB technology runs deep. When friction stir welding, one of the most important joining inventions of the last fifty years, was developed at TWI in Cambridge in 1991, ESAB was the only welding equipment manufacturer in the research programme from 1992, and went on to build the machines that took the process into shipyards and aerospace plants worldwide. More recently, ESAB brought Swift-Cut into the group in 2023: CNC plasma cutting tables designed and manufactured in the English Midlands, which have put automated cutting within reach of small UK fabrication shops that could never justify a heavy industrial machine.
Welding Equipment That's Designed Around the Welder
What sets ESAB apart for Weldtech and the reason their helmets lead our range, is how much of their recent engineering has gone into the person holding the torch rather than just the arc. The Sentinel helmet line is the clearest example.
True-colour lens technology gives a natural, full-colour view of the weld pool designed to reduce the eye strain of focussing on older models’ green tinted view for a full shift. Early feedback suggests that welders mention this as one of the first things they notice.
The new Sentinel A70's flip-up design lets welders grind and finish without ever removing the helmet, closing the gap where eye injuries traditionally happen. And with welding fume now classified as a human carcinogen and no safe exposure level recognised by the HSE, ESAB's air-fed helmets and EPR PAPR systems deliver TH3-rated respiratory protection, the highest class available, in a package that’s comfortable enough to wear all day.
That welfare focus is backed by substance: 4-year UK warranties on the Sentinel helmet range, full spares availability down to the last lens retainer, and a UK sales and support operation at Waltham Cross rather than a distributor somewhere on the continent.
ESAB at Weldtech
Frequently Asked Questions
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