we're joined today by Barry Roberts and Martin Russell from Marshall Tufflex and we always
love to get behind the scenes of some of Britain's most famous electrical manufacturers and Marshall
Tufflex is certainly one of those and what's the first thing we'd like to know Gary was about the
name so Marshall Tufflex how do we come up with the name well Harold Circuit our founder okay
so we know straight away it wasn't named after himself was it no no he started the company in
1942 to look after his wife's father and he's her aunt whose surname was uh Marshall so Charlotte
and Carl Marshall and hence the company C and C Marshall was formed in back then looking out
for the in-laws absolutely that's a novel thing to do there there's not many other people going
to be able to chip in the comments who are doing the same in their business aren't they but 1942
obviously we're in the middle of the war absolutely is that linked to how the company
started yes i think at the time obviously metal was being repurposed for use in the war
so obviously they needed a new material for downpipes and drain pipes and that's what
the business started doing okay so PVC so it converted from the the metal guttering and
metal downpipes and they've come they've seen an opportunity in a very difficult time in 1942
and they've converted that over to plastic good idea the business today is it still family-owned
there's still a family business still family shareholders and we make with them every year
so still a very important part of that business okay so we've been going i'm doing the maths
in 1942 that make it 80 years does that affect how people think about the business are the long-term
thinkers you know a lot of business short term looking at next year and the air after
no they're long-term thinkers definitely you know looking ahead all the time looking ahead at
new products and and and continuing the success that they've had for 80 years yeah and and then
looking getting back to products there's been a few different products before we got to cable
management so what's some of the interesting things that we've made in the past from uPVC
well we kind of got into electrical containment by accident but we started off making things like
chicken feed troughs debonair screen debonair screen which sounds like it sounds great today
yeah so that's just over there by my hair brush what's a debonair screen there were those
multi-colored uh like ribbons that used to hang in front of kitchens and doorways to stop flies from
getting around wow yeah there's a small child fighting your way into into different areas
of the house yeah she had two one on the back door but also on one on for the pantry area as
well stop flies yeah that makes sense everyone's grounded yeah debonair screamers no i think we
should bring them back i think yeah if we brought back mi in the past i think we can bring back the
deb and air screen definitely yeah and anything else that's uh strange horse race sensing posts
so not the actual jumps themselves but they've actual fencing posts that run around we used to
make those as well right so is that the white rail that was right around those uh fence posts in the
horse racing world but we talked about off camera didn't we missed a trick there didn't they perhaps
should have had some branding on it okay and how many people would have seen and stood by that
perhaps channel four would have been advertising Marshall Tufflex for a long time got a ring fence
to the market it could have ring fenced the market yeah good joke that was 1958 we got caught up in
the hula hoop we made the hula hoop you fancy having a little go live on the tv dear not really
okay again but that's that's chase that's a good company so obviously chasing down
what's happening there and then yeah so then obviously tried a lot of things obviously they
must have been reasonably successful but end up in cable management when did that happen
well that's that's an interesting story they started the electrical cable management in 1971
and that was almost by accident somebody was coming around they were showing some customers
the site one of the customers that was in the electrical industry noticed that we were doing
some conduit if our plumbing pipe but he thought it was electrical conduit and said how long have
you been doing it and we said doing what's electrical conduit and that's when the whole
market you know we realized there was a potential market there and the company created the Marshall
Tufflex name which is a combination of Marshall the original name tough flex tough and flexible
and that was the brand we use the electrical cable management from 1971 yeah it's been a long
time and then you're also for me also as known about that as well as about sustainability and
recycling because it's been an important part of our business but probably the last 25 years when
we first started introducing recycled product into our products we're aiming for this year to
make 80 of our products manufactured from recycled material that's effectively taking what is old
window frames which have been removed and chipping those and re-cleaning that material then using
that material again in the manufacture of our product so 80 of our product is effectively what's
been taken out of somebody's home as an old window and heading back into our product that's becoming
a bigger topic for everyone there isn't that whole circular economy thing baron you deal with the
specification end is that yes i mean it's i mean we've been doing it for 25 years so as i say it's
it's not new to us the way the world's going now with PVC and PVC waste we're pushing now really to
try and get to a stage where consultants will put it in a specification the minimum of 50 recycled
material on that PVC trunking which obviously is going to push everything forward you're not a 50
you're actually you're almost 80. so that's that's fantastic yeah that's true yeah yeah
as i say if it's in a specification at 50 but as i say we're almost at 80 um which we're hoping to
achieve this year but which ties in with the 80th birthday and they're catching you up so if you've
been doing it for 25 years and people were just switching out to this you're ahead of the curve
yeah yeah no we are and is it just PVC products or is there any other materials that we're using
that we've got no i mean we we do a lot of other products i mean Marshall Tufflex are known for
PVC cable management but um we do underfloor so the the buzz bar track and the floor boxes
we do aluminium trunking steel trunking we do GRP tray PVC tray and now we're moving into
galvanized tray as well so there's a lot of other products that Marshall Tufflex aren't known for
common thing is a lot of people say i didn't know you did that when we're thinking about the amount
you you manufacture everyone likes a big number how many how many meters are you making we have
a very big number okay pvc products you know our lamps we manufacture 12 million meters per year
so enough if you relay enter ends go from London to Hawaii all right well i'll just
uh just jump in there for you i'd like to just check where the end of that run is
i'll be the one to go if you stay there Gordon push you into the ocean and then you're always
looking for new ideas we're recently featured on the channel the Tufflex tile and that was
an electrician who gave you that idea wasn't it yes electrician looked at sights of people sort
of getting plywood out of skips using bits of odd timber for patrice's above full ceilings he's come
up with a Tufflex tile when you sort of talk to electrical contractors and especially apprentices
they they're out there cutting plywood up all day but for patrice's above the ceiling it's
not only a good solution it's a labor saving initiative as well and that sounds great so
he's come up with a fantastic idea he's probably come to you and you've taken that fantastic idea
is he getting a touch off the fact that he's done this here we go wait for this one yeah
yeah he's getting a touch i assume he's getting a touch off of him no he is getting attached
yeah how fantastic is that because that links in nicely not only have you left the gentleman
to come up the idea hole actually you do some fantastic charity work as well don't you yes we
have the uh Charlotte Marshall charitable trust and uh in the last five years we've generated a
quarter of a million pounds worth of uh donations for local cherries okay so when you say local
charities local hospice that's really struggling to keep going you're helping those ones out
exactly yeah that's good and the great thing is Marshall Tufflex also helped us on the college
connections which is not quite charitable status but obviously we know the silver bullet for
getting good electricians is education and the more manufacturers get involved in that
the better obviously getting kit out to colleges and giving people knowledge of products they may
not have seen during that training process i will leave a link for the top flex tile if you haven't
seen that that's a great solution developed by electricians but Barry Martin thank you thank you