Show products related to the compnay - intval

Hi guys, this one is driving me nuts because I have used the method before without problem:

I have a company section and a products section. Every time a product is added, I have a multiselect/checkbox list field (associated_company) where the user can tick which companies sell that product. This field is populated using num for values and title_english for labels from cms_companies

Now on the company page I am showing the detail page for the company, a list of other companies (so users can switch companies) and the list of products that have that company ticked as an associated company. The list of related products is not working (presenting zero results) when I am using this:

// load records from 'products_services'
list($products_servicesnavRecords, $products_servicesnavMetaData) = getRecords(array(
'tableName' => 'products_services',
'where' => "associated_company = '". intval($companiesRecord['num']) ."'" ,
'debugSql' => true, // optional, display SQL query, defaults to no
));

I set it up this way because one company can have many products, but one product can also relate to many companies.

The complete header code for this page is:

<?php header('Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8'); ?>
<?php


// load viewer library
$libraryPath = 'cmsAdmin/lib/viewer_functions.php';
$dirsToCheck = array('/home/jyfnge/public_html/','','../','../../','../../../');
foreach ($dirsToCheck as $dir) { if (@include_once("$dir$libraryPath")) { break; }}
if (!function_exists('getRecords')) { die("Couldn't load viewer library, check filepath in sourcecode."); }

// load record from 'companies'
list($companiesRecords, $companiesMetaData) = getRecords(array(
'tableName' => 'companies',
'where' => whereRecordNumberInUrl(0),
'loadUploads' => true,
'allowSearch' => false,
'limit' => '1',
));
$companiesRecord = @$companiesRecords[0]; // get first record
if (!$companiesRecord) { dieWith404("Record not found!"); } // show error message if no record found

// load navigation records from 'companies'
list($companiesnavRecords, $companiesnavMetaData) = getRecords(array(
'tableName' => 'companies',
'loadUploads' => true,
));

// load records from 'products_services'
list($products_servicesnavRecords, $products_servicesnavMetaData) = getRecords(array(
'tableName' => 'products_services',
'where' => "associated_company = '". intval($companiesRecord['num']) ."'" ,
'debugSql' => true, // optional, display SQL query, defaults to no
));
?>

Debug SQL spits this out:

SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS `products_services`.* FROM `cms_products_services` as `products_services` WHERE (associated_company = '3') ORDER BY dragSortOrder DESC