2010 is Mila Hardware’s 30th anniversary. We’ve got lots of things planned to mark the event and I’m sure we’ll be talking a lot during the year about the successes we’ve achieved over the last three decades and the strengths and values which have got us this far.

Our anniversary prompted me to do a bit of internet searching over the Christmas break to see how things have changed since 1980.

It highlighted many of the massive advances in technology that have happened over the past 30 years but some things were actually frighteningly familiar.

During 1980 for instance, more than 2m people were unemployed in Britain, there were wars going on in both Iraq (vs Iran) and Afghanistan (the Russians were trying to defeat them) and Robert Mugabe was causing concern as the president of Zimbabwe.

In other ways, it seems a million miles away though.  It was the year when Hewlett Packard launched the first personal computer (how did we all manage before?) and Philips launched the CD player (remember those!)

We were apparently going to the cinema to watch Fame (although personally I don’t remember it), Flash Gordon and The Shining and listening to Blondie and Abba.  It was also the year that John Lennon was shot and Ronald Reagan became president.

In terms of industry, the Solidarity movement was just getting established in Poland and steel workers in Britain were on strike over pay.  Perhaps the most shocking statistic I came across though was that 30 years ago 150,000 people in Britain were employed by British Steel – now Corus employs less than 24,000 – what does that say about the decline in British manufacturing?

The fenestration sector of course is pretty much unrecognisable from 1980 – timber and aluminium were still on top and the PVC-U sector was definitely in its infancy.   I joined Mila 1981 and it’s been a privilege to have been so closely involved with the growth of PVC-U since then and to have helped Mila establish its position as the leading hardware supplier.

It’s impossible to predict what will happen over the next 30 years, other than to say that someone will probably still be fighting in Afghanistan, but if the past 30 years are anything to go by, it will certainly be an interesting journey.

Richard