In Memoriam: HMG Paints Chairman Brian Falder (1931-2019)

HMG Paints Chairman Brian Falder died on Sept. 19, 2019. He was 88.

Falder was born in 1931, to Herbert and Ellen Falder, seven months after his father started H. Marcel Guest Ltd. (HMG).

He began working at the company at 14.

Falder met his wife of 65 years, Beryl, and after finding out that she worked for Sterling Vanish in Trafford Park, he remarked, “A girl in the paint industry? … I had better marry you!”

An iron rule at HMG was (and is) that everyone goes home at 5.00 p.m. Falder strongly believed that work and life must be in balance.

For more than 20 years he personally funded a non-contributory pension fund for his team, so that when they retired, HMG employees had “a bit extra.”

He planted the first new trees in Collyhurst for over 100 years in the 1960s, believing that even this part of Manchester “could look like the Lake District if we all do our bit.”

His two sons, John and Stephen, have 40+ years at the family business under their belts and building on their father’s values and passion for paint it has continued to flourish.

Fader always had time for people and usually had a joke or anecdote for them from a seemingly endless repertoire that he never forgot.

His last visit to his beloved factory was just a few days before he died.

There he inspected a Keenok single roll mill that he had originally bought in 1949.

He was as sharp as ever, remembering every detail with complete clarity. The mill, he was told, was “coming home” to HMG to be lovingly restored and placed at the heart of the company he had built and shaped.

Once the Keenok is fully restored and in the center of HMG, John and Stephen are going to have his name engraved upon it along with the epitaph “Si monumentum requiris, circumspice” – if you seek his monument look around you.

Fader was laid to rest on Oct. 4, 2019, exactly 89 years to the day that HMG paints was founded.