Our Story
Back in 1963 two friends met at an English garden party. One, Geoff Keen, was a pioneer of aerosol technology and the other, Ron Gibbons, was a director of the Finlay tobacco shop chain. Through a chance conversation in that garden the idea of Newport was born.
A multi-adaptor lighter refill which would make the host of refills, designed and produced individually for all the world’s cigarette lighters, a thing of the past. Newport was designed, made with world beating precision, and marketed to that world – to a level that is still there today.
Recognised as the world leader in its field for fifty years, Newport was the customer’s first choice, no matter how many other gas products were standing beside it. The unique style of the product was enough to take it to worldwide recognition.
But Keen World Marketing didn’t stop there. Over its first fifty years Newport has been improved, embracing every new market trend. In 1983 today’s standard for impurity-free butane was set by Keen World Marketing – for windproof lighters, that needed zero impurity gas to work their precision parts reliably, to today’s wealth of machines, systems and gadgets that depend on a gas that has been produced to only the most rigorous manufacturing procedures to reduce impurity levels as never before.
Newport’s style and consumer awareness has always depended on its unique cap. In the early days this was a six compartment unit, holding adaptors that could refill, literally, every gas lighter in the world.
Keen World Marketing even published several generations of lighter directories, listing every lighter, and easily showing the correct adaptor for the job. A shortened version of this list is still available today, on every Newport Refill can.
The cap went through many metamorphoses, ending up with today’s instantly recognisable crenulated design. Inspired by the turrets of a castle, this cap has virtually become the product’s trademark. It contains eight precision colour coded adaptors, and two high quality flints,to literally fill every gas lighter in the world.
But that has been true for over fifty years. Today the Newport refill has a far wider appeal. It is first choice for butane driven personal, household, medical and industrial products and appliances everywhere.
Increased precision called for increased attention to reducing impurities. inspiring Keen World Marketing to introduce their kite mark logo – Near Zero Impurities – to be used only when impurities reach less than one part per 20,000.
Impurity control at that miniscule level can only be achieved when every stage of the manufacturing process, from valves to can manufacture, to seals, even to fingerprints are controlled to perfection. And that is why Newport Butane Gas, and its long list of Private Label clients, hold the heady position of being number one globally.
Newport. Simply the best conceived, most reliable butane gas available throughout the world.