Celebrating Our 40th Anniversary

We’re proud to announce that on October 23rd 2021, Orbis celebrated its 40th Anniversary. Back in 1981, Orbis first began trading as Sitex Orbis, becoming the pioneers of Sitex security screens for the protection of vacant properties throughout the UK and Northern Ireland. Over the years, Orbis has continued to grow this service and remains the leading provider of security screens within the UK.

Following on from this success and due to rising customer demand, the business began to focus on the expansion of services to provide a wider range of protection solutions for properties, sites and people. Subsequently in 1998, Sitex Orbis rebranded the business to become Orbis Protect to reflect the inclusion of these additional complimentary services.

From the initial inclusion of temporary alarm systems, Orbis became the pioneer of lone worker services within the UK in early 2000, creating a dedicated Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC) based in the Wirral to service this growing industry. In 2005, a specialist cleaning service was introduced to help property managers with the deep cleaning of buildings including solutions such as anti-viral fogging and pest control. This then expanded into the disinfection of public sector vehicles such as police cars and ambulances, and even a forensic cleaning facility based in the Midlands to support our network of police authorities.

With a rise in demand for 24/7 customer support, in 2006 our ARC facility introduced an out of hours contact centre service to help our clients offer dedicated support for their customers, ensuring 24/7/365 access for all enquiries. Access control solutions were introduced in 2009 to help improve the efficiency of key handling for property managers interacting with multiple service providers. In 2020, Orbis’s first acquisition was made with the purchase of Optosafe, a leading CCTV tower security business, to further strengthen Orbis’ market position and innovation capabilities.

We’ve come so far

Today, our national resources include 20 offices and depots, 180+ vehicles and 450+ field operatives, which enables us to provide a truly localised, rapid-response service throughout the UK and Northern Ireland. Last year alone, we were proud to secure and protect over 60,000 properties and sites and support over 40,000 lone workers within a wide range of public and private sector industries. To help our customers manage such a wide range of services, considerable investment has been made to develop our new Customer Portal, to give our customers real-time access to reporting tools for all areas of their account.

To celebrate this significant milestone, our CEO Ben Howard wanted to say a few words –

“I am very proud to be announcing Orbis’ 40th Anniversary. This is a significant milestone that reminds us just how far the company has grown and what we have achieved. A customer first approach, technological innovation and incredible people have always been, and continue to be, the main reasons for our success.

I would like to take this opportunity to especially thank everyone in the team at Orbis who has helped to enable the business to adapt and grow so well over recent years. Your hard work and dedication has been incredible – thank you!

I would also like to thank our customers and industry partners for their continued support, some of whom have supported the business since it first began. The relationships that we have with you is the cornerstone of our success and I look forward to enhancing these for many more years to come.

I am very proud of what we have achieved together and look forward to our continued success.”

Ben Howard, CEO Orbis Protect

Our Mission & Values

Our goals have barely changed since 1981, and we continue to focus on our people, customers and communities. By focusing on technological advancement to deliver efficiencies, we are continually improving our processes to reduced administration time and resource for our customers. Our goals are –

To deliver an unparalleled level of service for our clients
To be an environmentally conscious organisation
To promote a culture of caring and giving back
To continuously challenge the status-quo and deliver innovative solutions
To consistently invest and lead in existing and new markets
To provide a positive working environment for all our employees

Accreditations

Orbis are externally audited and verified by a number of reglatory bodies and are members of multiple organisations to ensure that we are always ahead of any recommendations or legislative changes. Focusing on delivering high quality and safe services has been and will always be our commitment to our customers.

How are we celebrating?

Our ARC team kicked off celebrations with a pre-anniversary ‘Guess the date’ competition where everyone was invited to guess the start date of Sitex Orbis. All proceeds will be going to support the Cystic Fibrosis Trust charity, which we think is an incredibly worthy cause.

If you were at the CIH event in Manchester in September, you may have enjoyed a free glass of bubbly with our team there as part of our pre-celebration. We incorporated our new 40th anniversary logo on stand which gave us a great conversation starter with customers old and new.

We’ve arranged for branded bunting, balloons and banners for each of our sites throughout the UK and Northern Ireland to help create a jolly party atmosphere and we look forward to sharing the pics on social soon. Each of our teams have been asked to arrange an outing of their choice to help celebrate, so far the choices have been interesting with some opting for a nice traditional meal out and others playing laser tag at a local venue! However they choose to celebrate, we’re just glad that everybody can participate.

The support from our customers and people, throughout our 40 years, has been so pivotal to our success. We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for helping us to achieve this incredible milestone. See you in 10 years for our next anniversary!