They used to fettle knives of locally forged steel in Jennic’s Sheffield, UK, headquarters. The steelmen are gone, but the building, refurbished inside and out, houses an activity at the cutting edge of a more recent technology.

The privately held Jennic – the word derives from the founder Jim Lindop’s daughters Jennifer and Nicola – is unlikely ever to be a household name. But over the past 10 years it has achieved a reputation for world-class electronic circuit designs for top-tier customers such as IBM and Texas Instruments.