Family Business United has published a feature on Constant Group, looking at how the Oldham family manufacturer has grown since 1970 without losing the culture that built it, and how its Made in the North West Collaboration of the Year award with CommScope reflects the business it has become.
The piece is written by Paul Andrews, CEO of Family Business United, and draws on an interview with Emma Gilligan, joint managing director. It follows the business from its first £75 delivery truck to a £9.9 million precision sheet metal manufacturer, and asks how a company can grow while still feeling like a family business to the people inside it.
Award-winning collaboration with CommScope
Constant Group has won Collaboration of the Year at the Made in the North West Awards 2026 for its work with CommScope on the Openreach Exchange Exit Programme. For Emma, the award confirms something the team has known for a long time.
"Constant Group isn't a small, traditional manufacturer sitting quietly in the background," she said. "We're a technologically advanced manufacturing business based in Greater Manchester, working with major organisations and exporting products around the world."
The next goal is recognition. Emma wants Constant to be known for what it contributes to UK manufacturing, to Greater Manchester and the North West, and to Oldham, where the family's roots go back more than five decades.
From kick plates to telecoms cabinets
In June 1970 Harry Garlick opened Constant Aluminium Supplies Ltd on Greenhalgh Street, off Oldham Road. The money came from savings his eldest son Richard had put aside for a newsagent's kiosk. Harry's wife Vera kept the books, and orders went out by hand or on the bus until there was enough work to justify the firm's first truck, bought for £75. The first set of accounts, showing a profit of £4,434, still hangs on the wall.
About a year in, Richard started turning leftover aluminium sheet into fingerplates and kick plates. Constant became the UK's largest kick plate manufacturer, known for a 24-hour turnaround. Richard's wife Maggie left teaching to join the business, took orders by phone in the evenings, and later became company secretary.
Over the following decades fabrication outgrew ironmongery, and the company took the name Constant Group to reflect what it had become. Today it turns over £9.9 million from an 80,000 sq ft site at Meadowbank Business Park in Oldham, close to junction 22 of the M60. Its customers include BT, Openreach, Network Rail, Transport for London, M&S Food and Boots.
Design, engineering, manufacturing and assembly all happen under one roof. Engineers design in SolidWorks, Creo and Radan. An automated Bystronic fibre laser and Trumpf punching machine work alongside eight Bystronic press brakes. The site has 18 welding bays, automated powder coating lines, a stainless-only bead blast line and wet spray and polyurea coating. Dedicated areas handle mechanical and electromechanical assembly, and three 7.5-tonne wagons cover national delivery.
Constant specialises in telecoms cabinets and enclosures, food preparation units, medical and pharmaceutical cabinets and industrial and infrastructure parts, and is ISO 9001 certified. You can read more on our company history page.
Earning a place, not inheriting one
Richard and Maggie's children, Matt Garlick and Emma Gilligan, bought the business from their parents on 10 April 2021, Richard's birthday, and now run it as joint managing directors. Matt's wife Jayne works in the business as business development manager, and Emma's husband David is CTO.
Neither of them was simply given a job. Emma grew up in the business and worked there as a child for pocket money. "It's in my blood," she says. When she decided in the second year of her degree that she wanted to join, her father agreed on one condition: she had to create her own role and justify her own salary.
"That gave me a huge amount of drive to prove to everyone around me that I could do it," Emma told Family Business United. "Being a woman in what was, and still is in many ways, a male dominated industry gave me even more determination to be the best I could be and earn my place."
Keeping the culture as we grow
Much of the feature is about how Constant has kept a family feel as it has grown. The team is now around 100 people, and Emma knows every one of them by name. The family and senior managers work on the shop floor every day.
"It's important that people know they are valued as individuals, not just as employees or numbers on a spreadsheet. Without the team, we are nothing," she said.
The article also covers how the business keeps good people in a tight labour market. That means an open culture, where "we want there to be no conversation that can't be had", a four-day working week, and an in-house apprenticeship scheme that develops skills from within.
Still investing, still evolving
Constant has recently invested £3 million in new machinery and a new building at its Oldham headquarters, on top of earlier expansion into neighbouring units.
"There can sometimes be a perception that a long established family business is traditional or standing still, but that really isn't the case," Emma said. "Generational businesses have to evolve, expand and adapt."
Thank you to Paul Andrews and the Family Business United team for telling our story. Read the full feature.
