1921 

PC Henderson Limited is founded 24^th February 1921. Initially hay carriers and agricultural sliding door hardware were produced.

1923

The first version of Tangent round the corner sliding door gear is produced and is an immediate success.

1924

Because of the success of the round the corner gear, company moved to Tangent works in Barking, Essex and remains there for the next 31 years.

The company in these years intensively designs and patents a series of novel sliding gear solutions and develops rapidly.

1940

Tangent works is bombed several times as production is switched to armaments and aircraft components. With the roof replaced with tarpaulin, work continues.

1950

In June 1950 PC Henderson Limited becomes a public company. In doing so, much needed capital is raised to set in motion the planned expansion programme that will allow sliding door hardware to be produced in vast quantities.

1954

Henderson begins producing “Ultra” up and over door gear for timber garage doors. At the time, traditional side hinged doors were the norm. 

A design breakthrough created the first “Dolphin” door, a flat-packed metal garage door that is assembled on site. This allowed builders merchants to enter the garage door business which had been exclusive to joinery companies before then. As the price of timber increased, metal doors became more popular and subsequently we introduced the “Merlin” garage door. The Merlin established up and over garage doors as the main type of door in the UK and Irish markets.

1955

Due to continued growth in demand for sliding door hardware internationally, a new purpose build factory was built at Harold Hill, Romford, Essex.

1960

The subsidiary company PC Henderson (NZ) Limited is formed to support the rapidly growing markets of Australasia.

1965

In early 1965 a new office is opened in the Netherlands to handle the growing demand for doors and sliding door hardware across Europe.

1968

The Irish subsidiary company opened in 1968 to cater for demand for the Henderson industrial door range and the domestic garage door and sliding gear range.

1969

As demand for Henderson garage doors grew with an estimated 50% of all doors being fitted as Henderson, there came a need for a purpose built factory to cater for this demand. A site was purchased in Bowburn, Co Durham and in 1969 the dedicated garage door factory went into production.

1971-1987

In these years, the company continued to grow on both the garage door business and the sliding gear business. 1987 saw the landmark two millionth door rolling off the assembly lines at Bowburn.

1988

The Henderson group of companies was acquired by Hepworth plc, a leading building products company.

1991

Henderson gained BS5750 quality management accreditation, followed by European quality standard ISO9002, reinforcing the company’s commitment to quality.

1992

Over £10 million was invested in the Bowburn factory, making the production lines the most advanced in the world. The first Henderson “Premiere” steel garage doors were born, offering made to measure garage doors in 1mm increments, with unique button locking of panels, giving us the strongest garage doors on the market.

1994

Following further expansion at the Bowburn factory and the inherent communication problems with two production facilities 250 miles apart, the Romford plant was closed and all production was merged to the Bowburn plant establishing Bowburn as the head office and main base of the company.

2000

PC Henderson group of companies was acquired by Cardo AB, a Swedish based industrial products company. The company fits perfectly into their portfolio as Cardo AB is Europe’s fastest growing garage door company with production facilities in Germany (Normstahl) and Sweden.

PC Henderson Ireland has now aaccess to the exclusive range of “Euro doors” from Normstahl in Germany. We are also introduced to our Swedish manufactured sectional door range including the “Private, Diplomat, Consul and CD”.

2004

The Swedish range is replaced by the innovative g30 range of sectional doors. This door brings innovation to the domestic sectional door industry and it still leads the way in safe design, thermal and mechanical performance.

2004 is also the year when PC Henderson started distributing German made belt driven garage door operators called the “Ultra”. These are made by the sister company Normstahl in Germany.

2006

This year sees some exciting new products introduced by Normstahl, including new designs, complementary colour range, open for infill sectional and one piece doors allowing customers to effectively make their own doors. It is also the year when Normstahl is the first to achieve a security rating class 2 on their sectional range.

2007

The g30 is superceded by the g60 where every door is now 42 mm thick and achieves U-values equivalent to a double glazed unit. As these doors are designed for the Swedish market performance is key to their success.

2008

As the garage door industry goes through turmoil in the UK market, the garage door section of PC Henderson (UK) changes hands and is taken over by Bowburn Limited. The sliding door company remains unchanged and is growing from strength to strength.

2009

PC Henderson Ireland Ltd remain as part of the Cardo group of companies retaining access to the best in garage doors from our group companies. We also have roller doors manufactured for us by SWS UK and Gliderol UK. Both manufacturers are product leaders in their respective ranges.

2010

The Crawford industrial door group and the residential door business are merged into one division giving PC Henderson Ireland a new and exciting range of industrial products from Europe’s leading industrial door manufacturing company.

We have also launched webdoor.com in Ireland, an innovative solution provider in automatic entrance door components. See www.webdoor.com for further information.