Established by Harry Parsons and his wife back at the Millennium, working from their garage, Marmox has helped its ever-expanding customer base to benefit from a truly diverse selection of insulation materials and specialist bathroom products, with 2025 maintaining the momentum as the Kent based company introduces important new developments.
After leaving school in 1968, Harry then built on what he learned at Brixton School of Building through spells working for Waites, Wimpey and Costain before gaining an even broader education when the latter asked him to fill an urgent vacancy in Nigeria. There he ran the ‘Small Contracts Department, undertaking projects across a vast area. That was followed by being appointed as Middle East Manager for a coatings company, working from Turkey as far south as Yemen, while he also yearned to one day start his own business.
He explained:
“That step came when I flew into Cairo one night and was asked by my local agent to meet one Dr. Kamal the next morning. It turned out the learned doctor owned multiple businesses and showed me a number of products including a polyester resin and the coated XPS insulation which has come to be known as Multiboard. I was surprised to be told it sold well in Germany, but that the UK was a difficult market, so I arranged for him to send me some samples I could show around when I returned home.”
Marmox occupied progressively bigger premises before moving to its present Chatham HQ at Caxton House in 2010, where a team pride themselves on customer service as well as quality.
Having started in sales, son Jonathon is now Director of Business Development while sister, Sarah Viney joined in 2008 to become Managing Director, seeing the company go from strength to strength.
Sarah observed:
“While Marmox is a family business, most important is the fact that across the company, we have the right people in the right jobs and we’ve been so fortunate the majority of our staff have been with us from the very early days in one role or another. Our current finance director, for instance, worked with our accountants when the business was first set up.”
Referencing new products like Fireboard and a fire-resistant version of Thermoblock, she added:
“Overall I’m really excited about the future: parts of the construction industry are growing strongly again and, in time, we expect a greater shift towards off-site fabrication, which our boards are absolutely ideally suited to.”