Industrial Gas Springs History
Industrial Gas Springs Ltd. was formed in 1982 by Mr. M.E. Goddard and its initial name was N.R.G Engineering, a play on the word "Energy" Engineering. This was partly a result of Shock Absorbers and Dampers being part of the initial product range via third party companies.
The photo on the left shows NRG's name at an exhibition stand. The factory and office were spread over a three-story building at 151 Stafford Road, Wallington, Surrey. The downstairs front office was accounts and sales. The first-floor bay was Goddard's office and the top-floor attic room was the Sales director's office.
An early application showing Gas Springs fitted to a dot matrix printer cover and the first very edition of an IGS catalogue.
The company expanded into additional premises at Willow Lane and started manufacturing its own products in 1986.
In 1988 the company expanded and utilised additional premises at Willow Lane was primarily an assembly and despatch unit. Unfortunately, in August 1989 the Willow Lane unit was damaged by fire and suffered smoke damage.
IGS consolidated operations under one roof by moving to two units in Wates Way Mitcham. This allowed all staff, manufacturing, accounts, sales, etc. to all be in a single site.
Due to upgrades by British Telecom over the years, customers saw the telephone number change from 081-646-6595 to 0181-646-6595 and now to 020-8646-6595.
Customers still quote this as a part reference when calling for spares!
More History!
- October 1995 & 2000 — The new white and gold catalogue saw the introduction of a new IGS logo and our last catalogue before the internet age.
- 2000 — contract to supply springs to Eurofighter aircraft awarded.
- July 2004 — ISO 9001 certificate obtained and renewed.
- January 2005 — IGS introduces a side release valve design option.
- Summer 2005 — IGS first published Newsline newsletter.
- September 2007 — IGS founder retires and sells the company to Inflite.
- Autumn 2008 — IGS celebrates 25 years of business.
- 2012 — Extensive test equipment installed for both development and production testing.
- 2014 — Adjoining unit acquired for additional storage and manufacturing capacity.
- 2018 — IGS celebrates 35 years of manufacturing and an increasing number of employees who have been with the company for more than 25 years.
