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M.C. Gill Corporation is the oldest, continuously operating manufacturer of reinforced plastics - called "composites" - in the world. We are vertically integrated and our corporation is privately held.
Our company was founded on September 11, 1945 by Merwyn C. Gill, who is universally referred to as "M.C." Like many California entrepreneurs, M.C. started his company in a garage. His business was originally named the "Peerless Plastics Products Company."
M.C.'s initial effort was to market post-war consumer items. In the beginning, the products, such as laminated place mats, lamp shades, and plastic wall coverings were directed toward the average household. He even tried a balsa wood bat with cork balls in an effort to tap new market segments. Success was slow in coming and M.C. ran his business nights and on weekends while working a regular day job.
After seven years of struggling, the focus of the plastics business changed to lighter weight, high-specific strength, corrosion-resistant materials, with increasingly larger opportunities opening up in the aircraft industry. A transition was made away from consumer products into the then new world of composites. As a result, a highly specialized new company rapidly developed.
M.C. Gill Corporation took a giant step in 1955, by investing all of the company's profits into a large low pressure press. This press enabled our company to make larger, higher-quality laminates. Affectionately called "Press 2", it is still in operation at the company's El Monte facility.
M.C. Gill became a principal supplier to Douglas Aircraft, supplying cargo compartment liner for the DC-6, gradually branching to supplying replacement parts to commercial airlines in the early 1960s. |
By 1962, our active Research and Development lab developed a polyester-laminate cargo liner for airplane baggage compartments. It became one of the bestsellers in our company's history. Interestingly, in carefully controlled laboratory testing, both Boeing and Douglas found that it did not test nearly as well as the competitions' unidirectional laminates. However, it outperformed all other cargo liners in service. The airlines loved it to the extent that, for many years, a majority of M.C. Gill business came from replacement and retrofit markets.
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M.C. Gill's belief in in-service testing paid off again in the 1960s. The aircraft community was looking for a product to replace aluminum-faced/aluminum-honeycomb flooring panels because of denting and corrosion problems associated with that material. We advanced the theory that balsa wood had all the strength necessary at half the cost.
In-service tests proved him right, despite the fact that the product failed in laboratory analysis. Airframe manufacturers shunned him while airline maintenance buyers bought in quantity. Before Federal Express acquired Flying Tiger in 1988, Flying Tiger retrofitted every one of their 747 OEM floors with our balsa wood flooring. While within the industry, aramid fiber Nomex® honeycomb became the core material of choice for aircraft flooring panels, balsa core panels, with either polyester or aluminum facings, still remains M.C. Gill Corporation's largest-selling replacement flooring panel to the airlines.
M.C. Gill Corporation: Today & Tomorrow
Since 1952 the company expanded to larger quarters eleven times, including its second location, which was a Quonset hut. It now occupies several large buildings across several acres on Easy Street in El Monte, California.
M.C. Gill Corporation sales to the commercial aircraft industry account for the vast majority of our total production. Occasionally, orders for material are received from non-aviation related customers, most notably ballistic laminates for U.S. Navy applications, entertainment industry uses and even for seat construction in exotic sports cars.
The growth of the M.C. Gill Corporation is based upon our commitment to quality and the determination to continually enhance the company's production capabilities. The company is proud of this growth and believes in maintaining product excellence, developing greater manufacturing capability, and building for the future with fine employees.
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