A HAMPSHIRE engineering firm which started as one man with two lathes and a milling machine has just celebrated its 25th anniversary.

Telmar CNC Limited was founded by Terry Mould after he was made redundant as works manager at the now closed JNG Engineering.

Terry was known as Tel, and he combined this with the first three letters of his wife’s name, Margaret, to create his company’s name.

Today Telmar, based in a 4000sqft unit in Chandler’s Ford Industrial estate, employs eight people and is run by Terry’s daughter Lucy.

The firm works with a variety of materials including stainless steel, mild steel, aluminium, titanium, brass, copper and plastics.

Many of the components machined at Telmar are for use in the automotive, marine, defence, pharmaceutical and weighing industries, with batches ranging from one-off to 15,000.

One of Telmar’s first high-profile jobs was to help make the winches for the 1992 America’s Cup Yacht Nippon Challenge in 1992.

Telmar has also had made many components for the classic car industry with a notable example being Collapsible Morgan Hub.

However, their biggest customers are cable company Prysmian, for whom Telmar make copper connectors for under water cables.

In September 2012 Terry retired and Lucy took over as managing director.

Lucy, 36, originally came into answer the phones while her parents were on holiday for two weeks 14 years ago and has never left.

It was a complete career change for Lucy who had previously worked in the duty free shop on a cross-channel ferry.

Since then she has gained a qualification in accountancy, taken a diploma in quantity management and acquired an extensive knowledge of engineering.

“When I first started people thought ‘she doesn’t know what she’s doing’ but I’ve built up a really good relationship with all our customers and suppliers,” said Lucy, who says the engineering industry is still male dominated.

She’s doesn’t restrict her duties to the office and has been known to operate one of the machines occasionally and is also Telmar’s delivery driver.

The business saw its turnover halved during the recession, says Lucy, but it is now recovering slowly.

“ believe it takes ten years to come out of a recession,” said Lucy. Lucy said: “We were lucky because we owned all our machines and we were able to ride out the bad times.”