TS Designs - The History

Owen Hughes • 5 June 2025

Established nearly thirty years ago by the current MD, Geoff Mabon, the business came about when Geoff, with an engineering background, was talking about the challenge of designing an access door that needed very little maintenance. The door in question was on a radar station at the top of a mountain and was subjected to the worst that the British weather could throw at it.


TS Designs then set out to provide bespoke, maintenance free security doors to our launch customers National Air Traffic Services and Norweb (now Electricity North West Limited). Since then, we have been ever present within the utilities sector having installed doors onto over 10,000 substations for clients such as Electricity North West, Scottish Power Energy Networks, National Grid, National Grid Electricity Distribution, Scottish and Southern Energy, along with many other ICPs and IDNOs. We have also supplied and fitted doors to a vast range of other building types including hospitals, schools, residential housing blocks, data centres, oil refineries, police stations, nuclear sites and even an armoury.


The concept was to use materials that were not affected by adverse weather, not subject to rot or rust and were also able to provide appropriate levels of security.


During this time we have continually developed and refined our products to meet the evolving needs of our customers. As a design company at heart, we will engineer solutions to any of our customers’ needs. This had led to our ranges of lockable cable access ports, louvre ventilation systems, door stays, bespoke locking solutions and many more – all manufactured in house.


The result was a comprehensive range of doors that are maintenance free and fundamentally “fit and forget”. Doors fitted almost 30 years ago, to this day have required no maintenance. The result was a significant amount of interest from utility providers in the UK, all who were looking to reduce their long-term costs. These businesses have vast building stocks and maintenance of their physical estates is an ongoing battle akin to painting the Forth Road Bridge. A product which allows buildings to stand long term without the need for programmed maintenance is a clear winner when it comes to through life cost of ownership.


In 2019 we introduced our comprehensive range of stainless-steel security doors rated B5 (SR2+) and C5 (SR3) against LPS 1175. Staying true to our maintenance free ethos, we are the only door supplier to certify our entire range in either 304 or 316 grade stainless steel thereby eliminating the possibility of rust which is inevitable in any product manufactured from mild steel.


As a business, TS Designs has always been very aware of the need to minimise waste, both during the manufacturing process and within the products themselves. The result of this approach is a product portfolio that helps to reduce not only the embedded carbon in a product, but also the lifecycle carbon footprint of each product. With increasing carbon reporting requirements, TS Designs are proud to announce that all of our products have been independently carbon certified, ensuring all our clients can identify the full life carbon impact of each door.


Sustainability is at the heart of what we do. There is no doorset with a smaller lifetime carbon footprint than one with an unlimited life span!

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