Island Life October/November 2018

Interview
Putting Island
on the
world map
Everyone loves a story of ‘local boy made good’, and they don’t come
much more inspiring than that of Geoff Underwood, a Newport-born, ex-
Carisbrooke High School pupil who started his working life as a Plessey
engineering apprentice and went on to found a multi-million pound tech
business right here on the Island. Jackie McCarrick spoke to him and
discovered a man with an insatiable thirst for life, business, fundraising,
cars and sport - and an absolute passion for the Isle of Wight.
As the CEO of a company that
turns over £13m a year supplying
cutting-edge products to the
world’s big airline operators,
Geoff Underwood is well aware
that it would probably make far
more commercial sense for his
Newport-based IFPL operation to
re-locate to the West Coast of the
US. Not that he’s about to do it.
“I grew up on the Island” he
explains, “it’s where I live, it’s
a place I love, and I’m proud
of the organisation and the
team we have here, designing
and producing everything inhouse
and spending around
£2.5 million a year with local
business and services.”
In fact IFPL – located in smart
glass-fronted headquarters
at what was formerly a hang
glider manufacturing plant –
currently employs 70 people,
many of them long-servers, and
including employees number
two, three and four who were in
on the enterprise from its small
beginnings over 20 years ago.
Since then the company has
carved out a global niche in
developing technical in-flight
products, stemming from its
original plug-in headphone
socket, which sells 350,000
units a year and currently has
2.5million units in service
worldwide. It has twice been
recognised with a Queen’s Award
for Enterprise, in 2008 and 2014.
So how and why such a highly
specialised business? Geoff says
he can trace it back to boyhood,
and his instinct for ‘problem
solving, and fixing things’.
He explains that his grandfather,
a refuse collector, would often
bring home broken items that
people had thrown away, and
that he, Geoff, would take
delight in mending them.
With the encouragement of
his engineer father, John - who
had been recruited to the Island
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