Third Generation British Manufacturer GEN3 Systems Celebrates 50 Years in Business

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GEN3 recently celebrated, with all its staff, the 50th anniversary of the business founded by Arthur Naisbitt in 1969. The celebration had to be postponed by 3 years due to the Global Covid Pandemic.

Ex-marine engineer (1942 – 1947) and former officer of the Royal Artillery (1953 – 1963), Arthur Naisbitt (Generation 1) established the business representing the multi-national French heavy engineering company Fives Group. Turnkey manufacturing plants for cement, sugar, mines, quarries, mineral processing and steel, the original GEN1 Business had success around the world as far afield as Australia, India, Africa, Europe as well as the UK.

Generation 2, Graham Naisbitt, spent the first 30 years of his business career working in the same industrial sector both with Fives Group and later Babcock International subsidiary Claudius Peters in Germany (1980 – 1986). Graham then returned to the family business which had secured a new opportunity in the electronics industry on behalf of American group HumiSeal. This new part of the business, Concoat, helped develop the market for conformal coating products throughout Europe, ultimately manufacturing not only products under license from HumiSeal, but developing their own formulations.

Concoat was ultimately sold to HumiSeal in 2005. The company however retained their equipment manufacturing division that had benefited from the acquisition from Henkel of the former Multicore test equipment division in 2002 and became known as GEN3.

3rd Generation Andrew Naisbitt joined the business full time in 2010 and assumed management from 2020 as the result of lockdown. The pandemic necessitated structural change and Andrew was then promoted to CEO and Graham taking the role of President (Chairman).

For almost 30 years GEN3 has worked closely with the British National Physical Laboratory (NPL). This unique relationship has helped in GEN3’s development of the MUST solderability tester, AutoSIR and AutoCAF insulation resistance measurement systems and CM Series ionic contamination test systems, as well as helping the company define new measurement techniques and equipment of which more will follow. 

Through this relationship, and for almost 30 years, GEN3 has been engaged in international standards development with ISO, IEC as well as IPC in the USA.