Back in 1948 when Mr Pepper started making shells for munitions in his workshop at the back of his petrol station, he probably didn’t dare imagine that his business would grow to be the success story it is today.
Post war, he swapped munitions for sheet metal work, eventually embracing the electronic age by focusing on the manufacture of control panels, with cable glands being just a part of the overall package. As the business grew, he had to take on more employees until he outgrew the petrol station workshop and moved the business to bigger premises in Camberley.
When it became apparent that the control panel side of the business was not moving as quickly as the need for cable glands, the decision was made to focus all efforts on being the very best cable gland and accessories manufacturer in the UK. Our name was changed from Peppers of Woking to Peppers Cable Glands and the busines grew at an astonishing rate. Finessing the product and streamlining our proposition signalled the start of an incredible journey.
An acquisition by Currie & Warner(Holdings) Limited was a major growth turning point for Peppers, giving us access to manufacturing processes that facilitated a number of industry leading designs and innovations.
What is important to Peppers, is that we have kept the same mindset throughout our growth, and that is from start to finish, we do it all. Just like Mr Peppers in his workshop, we provide the ultimate end-to-end performance, by staff trained in all departments.
People, product, place – here’s how and why we’re acing all three
Quality and innovation
We also know that developing our product is fundamental to staying ahead of the competition and over the last few decades we have been innovators in our field.
In 2001, we launched our CROCLOCK, a multi-clamping, deluge-proof gland for armoured cable. This unique design has no reversible components thereby it eliminates installer error and reduces installation time.
This led to the launch of four new barrier glands in 2004, featuring CROCLOCK. These were the first glands to feature our no ferrule technology inside, which allow them to be fully inspectable – a unique new design. This was swiftly followed by the launch of our range of UL approved Barrier Glands for the USA market.
In 2019 we launched Eclipse, a liquid barrier gland with no ferrule technology. At that time, although there were other two part fast setting resin systems on the market, these systems did not allow for any inspection inside the sealing chamber. Eclipse is a game-changing, allowing the installer to retract and inspect the compound to ensure the effective introduction of compound has been dispensed between the cable cores to create the required gas tight seal.
Our people stay
It’s simple really -we have learnt that happy staff equal happy customers, so we treat them well and they stay. Our colleague Paul has just retired after forty-seven years, and many of our staff are past the twenty-year mark. Even our MD started as a stock controller, a role he took on a temporary basis after graduating in finance. That was thirty-seven years ago. So our customers get the very best service, from people who truly know their stuff and who will see the order through from start to finish.
Geographical success
In 2007 we opened an office in California, USA with stock holding to allow for faster delivery times.
In 2011 we opened an office in St Petersburg, Russia, like the USA they hold stock in Russia to speed up delivery times.
In 2017 we started Peppers Asia Pacific in Singapore, a sales office looking after our interests through a distribution network covering the whole of Asia.
At its core, Pepper’s is still the same small workshop at the back of a petrol station – we still get to know all our customers, there’s just a few thousand more.
