Brenda – moving on without us for the first time
Brenda Cresswell is retiring after five decades, and half a working life spent with us. Three times Power Gems has moved to a new location, and Brenda has stayed with us, so it feels like the end of an era.
We will miss Brenda; it’s like she’s moving on without us.
Phil Ellams and Brenda Creswell
She has been the stalwart of the assembly line since 1996; always choosing to work on what started as the EB125, and then became the EB180.
By building and wiring the EB180 day after day she has a keen understanding and product knowledge, which she’s passed on and provided an informal support-system to each new member of the Power Gems team. Some of our latest recruits are taking on the heavy mantle of the EB180P/K56 product line.
Brenda says she’s enjoyed working at Power Gems HQ. The workshop is quieter – not in terms of production, if anything, we’re busier than ever – as the noisy machines have been phased out, allowing for more chat. The radios used to be cranked up, competing with the noise from the compressor.
Working in electronics is never about glamour, and Brenda hasn’t baulked when asked to turn up for work on the site of an abandoned colliery, beside an orange canal and a former steelworks.
We started life in Brenda’s home town of Swinton, in Salford, Greater Manchester. In 1995, we set up in the Agecroft Enterprise Park, a business park created by the University of Salford, a mere three miles away and Phil’s alma mater.
In 1996, Brenda joined Power Gems because her employer, one of our neighbours, went bust.
In 2005, we moved to nearby Sherrington House in Monton, and you could tell Brenda was a local because the alarming colour of the Bridgewater Canal didn’t warrant a second glance. As we came to learn, the canal is stained a muddy orange from the iron oxide (or as we like to say, rust) from the old iron ore mine.
Later, Brenda came with us, four miles further out to the West, to Irlam. The village prospered with the opening of another canal in 1894, the Manchester Ship Canal, which connected the docks in Liverpool and Manchester and led to rapid growth. Steel manufacturing and soap production employed thousands, but the decline of heavy manufacturing during the 70s saw the regeneration of the works into industrial parks. Fairhills Industrial Estate, based on the former steelworks, has been home to Power Gems since 2006.
You can spend a whole working life at Power Gems, as Brenda has shown. She’s been with us for 23 years, her longest time with one employer. As she looks forward to spending more time with her husband and dog, we wish Brenda all the best for retirement.
