History

The company's founder, Bert Thomas, set up the business as Contacta Communication Systems Limited in May 1970 to distribute a range of Swedish intercom systems to organisations in the UK. This was in the days when telephone systems were extremely primitive and internal communications were notoriously slow.

Within a short while Contacta became one of the market leaders in this field and Bert was able to move the company from a room above his garage to more expansive offices, stores and workshops in Bromely, Kent.

By the early 1980s, the company had started to design and manufacture its own range of intercom systems and moved once again to purpose built premises in south east London. The expanded facilities available enabled the company to push into a number of key export markets including North America, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, the Benelux countries, Kuwait and Australia.

With the introduction of new and more sophisticated telecommunication systems, the demand for intercom systems became more specialised and, to aid diversification, the company introduced new product lines including Imex VCS, a multi channel voice communication system for financial traders and SecuriCom, a full open duplex speech transfer system for use with bandit screens.

A breakthrough for the business was achieved in 1993 when a minituarised version of Securicom was installed at every cashier position throughout the branch network of Nat West Bank in the UK. This led in turn to the product being adopted by all of the country's leading 'high street' banks by the end of the decade.

It was working with the UK banks that the company became aware that, even with the provision of an electronic speech transfer system, hard of hearing customers still found it difficult to communicate with cashiers. This led to extensive research into technologies that could improve communication between service providers and people with hearing loss. The result was the development of the InfoLoop range of audio induction loop systems which were first introduced in 1994 and are now being used tens of thousands of sites worldwide. 

Today, operating from its modern head office in West Malling, Kent, the company is firmly established as the UK market leader in the provision of electronic audio systems for face to face communication. Contacta's continuing success in future is based on its people. The senior management team, staff and workforce of committed, hard working people share an attention to detail and a desire to evolve to meet new challenges with innovation and enthusiasm.