Over the years, G&H began to expand from creating precision optics solely for other manufacturers, to designing and producing its own line of optical and acousto-optic devices.

In 1980, the company achieved a significant milestone with the introduction of the acousto-optic Q-switch. This breakthrough led to G&H’s transformation into a company that supplied active crystal components to laser system vendors and helped revolutionize modern materials processing and advanced manufacturing in microelectronics.

Initially, G&H primarily supplied to UK government, industrial scientific research, and academic customers. However, by the mid-1990s, the majority of their revenue came from acousto-optics devices supplied to overseas markets such as the United States, Germany, and Japan. To expand its technological base, the company started to acquire other companies, which broadened its core technology, expanded its footprint and increased its customer base. This marked the beginning of G&H becoming an international business with genuine global reach.

Today, G&H is a world leader in the photonics industry.

With over 1,000 skilled employees working in design, engineering, sales, marketing, operational and manufacturing across twelve facilities. Our components are most often found in the core of high reliability systems in the aviation, space, biomedical and telecommunications industries. The common theme in all our business is highest reliability, quality, and performance. Our newest products are often the result of collaboration between our sites that combine the unique capabilities of each team. For example, our ability to grow and process crystals, convert them into functional modules and ultimately system integrate them together with other G&H components into equipment, makes us a key and long-term partner to our customer base. Our ability to manufacture custom components and integrate them into sub-systems is ultimately what can create a system performance differentiator that translates to a unique selling point for our clients and underpin their success in the marketplace.

Understanding our ability to push the performance envelope of the technology, we, continue to play a key role in supporting cutting edge research programs for laser fusion, planetary exploration, and quantum technologies.

We are constantly challenging ourselves in the areas of product development and manufacturing excellence in order to support our growth ambitions, and we are confident that the broad range of capabilities within our diverse and engaged workforce will enable us to achieve our goals.

At the heart of our success lies our exceptional craft skills, which we have honed by years of experience working with optics, optical coatings, photonics, and advanced system integration. We understand that these skills are crucial to our ability to make devices that other companies may not be able to produce. That’s why we are committed to working hard to attract, retain, develop, and grow our skilled workforce. An example of this is through our apprenticeship scheme that we run to ensure that these skills are passed onto the next generation.

As we look to the future, in 2023 we launched a new strategy for the Group focused on transforming G&H to a new level as an ‘innovative customer focussed technology company’ for the next chapter of our story. This will be delivered responsibly by making a ‘better world with photonics’ and ensuring that G&H remains the ’first choice’ for all our stakeholders whether that’s our employees, our customers, our shareholders, our eco-system partners, or the communities where we operate.