THE founder of an award-winning Malvern company has died at the age of 90.

Steve Trudgill, 90, created Malvern Instruments, which makes scientific equipment and has been a major employer in the town since 1962.

Mr Trudgill was born in Nelson, Lancashire, and started his working career aged 17 as an apprentice at the defence electronics establishment that later became QinetiQ.

This was during the early years of the war, and Mr Trudgill worked with some of the top engineers in the country to develop radar, a significant contribution to the winning of the war. He spent the next 20 years at the establishment, becoming a senior experimental officer.

Mr Trudgill married Evelyn in 1947 and at the same time started up a business repairing old televisions, which developed into a mail-order TV tube business.

In 1961, he got together with Bill Woodley and Arthur Kitson to found Precision Display Systems, with Mr Trudgill as managing director, supplying cathode-ray tube mounting units and focus coils to electronics company Ferranti.

The business expanded and in 1965, it moved to Spring Lane North. Its product portfolio expanded further and 1971 there was another move to Spring Lane South, and a name change to Malvern Instruments Ltd.

In 1977, the company won the Queen’s Award for Technological Achievement and the MacRobert award, recognising its successful development of innovative engineering ideas. It won three further Queen’s Awards between 1981 and 1988.

The success of the business attracted interest from potential buyers and Mr Trudgill sold the business to Cray in 1985, finally leaving in 1988.

Now a world-leading company employing 897 people, 375 in Malvern, it continues to develop technically innovative products, building on Mr Trudgill’s innovation and leadership.

Once he left the business, Mr Trudgill concentrated on his many hobbies, which included fly fishing, photography, motorbikes and cars, although steam locomotives were his passion, emphasised by the building of a working steam locomotive railway system in his back garden.

Mr Trudgill’s wife died in 2007. He is succeeded by four children, ten grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.