The business was founded in March 1991 by husband and wife team Gillian and Malcolm Rae. 

In its early days the firm operated from small premises in South Nutfield, Surrey and focused on UV curing systems for the narrow web label presses.

The firm grew rapidly on the back of its success in this market, moving to successively larger premises. 

In 2012 the company relocated to a purpose-built, state-of-the-art facility near to London Gatwick Airport.

Today, GEW lays claim to being Europe’s leading UV curing specialist, and designs and manufactures a range of mercury arc and LED UV curing systems for a broad range of applications including printing, coating and converting. 

The Rae’s son and daughter also work at the family-owned firm, which has sales of around £50m and subsidiaries in Germany and the USA. 

Malcolm Rae said the firm’s approach had resulted in a loyal customer base, and its first-ever customer was still buying products from the business today. 

He said the future of GEW was in “many capable hands, supporting our customers and developing innovative new products to maintain our leading position in the industry”.

Even during the Covid-19 situation GEW said it had experienced “higher demand than ever” and had recruited new employees.  

“Today, GEW equipment is used on many of the world’s most advanced printing machines and our products are highly regarded for their standard of engineering, reliability and performance,” Rae stated.

Recent advances at the company have included the compact LeoLED system, introduced in 2019, which can be retrofitted to sheetfed presses. Flint Group also turned to GEW to help speed the adoption of LED UV among its customer base, and at the beginning of this year GEW also became the preferred UV supplier to Japanese press manufacturer RMGT. 

The company name was based on Gillian Rae's maiden name. Head of corporate communications Duncan Smith said that in the intervening years it had been decided that it can also stand for “Getting Everybody Working!”