The Story of BST

As 2025 marks BST’s 40^th anniversary, it feels like a good time to look back on where we came from and appreciate the progress we have made. From humble beginnings to cutting edge innovation, we spoke with the Founder and Namesake of BST Detectable Products to hear his story.

“Well, it all started when redundancies cropped up at work.” In 1983 there was talk that they were going to close the bakery Brian worked in. So, facing redundancy in 1984, Brian was offered the opportunity to go down to Canterbury and resume his engineering role there. “I went for an interview and got the job, and I decided I wasn’t going.” A bold decision but an easy one according to Brian. With a house in Doncaster and a wife with a good job in the area, it made no sense to Brian to move.  When his regional manager questioned Brian’s decision and asked what he planned to do instead, he simply replied “I’m going to start a business.” Of course this was met with scepticism, but Brian had decided that this was what he needed to do, and so, he did.

“I had nothing to start with, nothing at all.” With what little redundancy he had received, Brian scraped together the basics of a business, BST Engineering Supplies, which then became the foundation of what we now know to be B S Teasdale and Son Ltd t/a BST Detectable Products.

“People lean over products with pens in their pockets and behind their ears or they get knocked off desks and fall into a product and the companies were getting tremendous fines for this and they’d all got metal detectors to find these things that fall in the product, so we started making them detectable”

The first step was to get out on the road and, using contacts he had made from training courses and 23 years’ experience as an engineer, spread the word of his new business. His aim: to help people and solve problems in the food industry.

“I knew four other engineers; Sheffield, Doncaster, Nottingham, and Leicester. […] So, I went round and spoke to them and told them what I was doing and asked if there anything I could help them with. I think they all said ‘yeah that’d be handy’, ‘have you got this’, and ‘can you get that’ and that’s how it started.” From there, the business grew by word of mouth with people suggesting new companies to visit, adding contacts to Brian’s ever-growing list of potential customers.

“And then after that, every time you went in somewhere somebody would come up with some other idea or request.”

Early business life was a struggle as this one-man operation strived to keep up with demand. “I was just about beginning to make profit after three years. I wasn’t even breaking even the first two years.” But luckily, Brian had help from his family to support him. “[My wife] was doing all the invoices at the weekends for me […] John joined me after three years, that’s really when it started to go […] it was a case of getting out there. I thought ‘it’s starting to go, we’ll get there’”. Brian still reminisces on the memory of his son, John, being sat in the garage assembling detectable felt greasing pads for crumpet rings in the early days of business. “All it was, was two-part adhesive with some cast-iron filings sprinkled in it on the back of these felt pads so if they fell out, the metal detectors would pick it up.” However, this was not BST’s first detectable product. In fact, Brian had already begun to outsource the production of detectable suction cups for depanner belts after giving the detectable idea to a company already producing suction cups without the detectable additive.

Today, BST are arguably best known for their pens, but where did that idea come from? “Where it all comes from, somebody asks you ‘can you do this?’ and you say well I can try and see what we can come up with. And that’s what we did.” They got to work finding somebody who could make extrusions for the body of BST’s first detectable stick pen and came across Shaw Trust. These extrusions were then filled with ink and the first detectable pen was born. From there the pen evolved with the introduction of refills which went down the tube body of the pens. “It grew that much that we had to start having some machinery made.”

After this, BST set to moulding their own retractable pens which were x-ray visible as well as metal detectable and anti-bacterial, “that’s when they got better. Because the extrusions were never exactly the same, some would shrink a bit more or the hole wasn’t in the centre.” As well as the retractable pen, BST developed a new, hexagonal, one-piece design so that it would be less likely to roll off a surface and into the product, therefore reducing the risk of foreign body contamination further.

Soon though, it became too much for Brian. Too much had changed over the years, and it was becoming impossible for Brian to continue as he had been. Where he had been doing the rounds and dropping in on people, now he had to make appointments and wait at receptions which effectively killed his routine. It became impossible for Brian to get out as he once had as appointments could be unpredictable. If one meeting was delayed or ran late then it ruined the appointments for the rest of the day. “I’d go into one bakery, and he’d say, ‘oh I’ll be with you in ten minutes’, and it might be an hour before I see him again”. So, in 2002, Brian retired and his son, John Teasdale, became the head of the company.

“I just suddenly got tired of all the legislation […] you couldn’t get through the door”

“Since then, of course, it’s just come on leaps and bounds. John’s done a lot more than I ever did”. Since taking over from his father, John has relentlessly driven the growth of the company and now BST stock over 2000 different food safe detectable products and export to an overseas distribution network of 53 companies covering over 82 countries.
A lot has changed in the 23 years since Brian’s retirement including a major relocation to larger premises in 2008. “The move [to our current site in Finningley] was fantastic, we’d never have done that if I’d been there. He just took the risk”. Brian and his wife have always been the type to play it safe, but couldn’t be more proud of what John and the business as a whole have achieved through innovation and risk taking. In 2011, Brian’s daughter, Carol, joined the company to help carry on his legacy, playing a pivotal role in the day-to-day running of the company and guiding it into its next chapter.

Brian shared with us a little story about some words of wisdom he once received and has lived by ever since; “I’d been at Rotherham as an engineer for about three years and we were having trouble with burners and this guy came up from Baker Perkins, he was a great guy, he said ‘one thing I’ve learnt, Brian, in my time is just listen to what people are saying before you jump on them, and you’ll learn a lot.’ People get frustrated about things and little snippets come out when they’re taking to you and if you’ll just stand and listen – where a lot of people will just say oh get on with it and walk away – you’ll find you learn a lot.”

“Someone once said to me, listen to people and you’ll learn a lot, just listen to what they’re saying. And you know, it’s true.”

BST have since launched BST Detectable Inc in the US, strengthening global reach and bringing trusted detectable products closer to American customers.

In reflecting on the business’ journey so far, Brian summarised that “it took a long time to get it to where it was when I left, and it’s blossomed since.”