Alfred Gooding (died 29 January 2018) was a Welsh entrepreneur. Over a fifty-year period, he founded companies in the construction and electronics sectors. Gooding was born in

Risca Risca () is a town in the Caerphilly County Borough and within the Historic counties of Wales, historic boundaries of Monmouthshire (historic), Monmouthshire in south-east Wales. It is split into two Community (Wales), communities; Risca East an ...

South Wales South Wales ( ) is a Regions of Wales, loosely defined region of Wales bordered by England to the east and mid Wales to the north. Generally considered to include the Historic counties of Wales, historic counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire ( ...

, the son of a miner. In the 1950s he started Modern Building Wales Limited which built 7,000 houses across Wales. His most famous venture is Catnic, the company credited with developing the steel lintel for the building industry. In 1982, the company was involved in a House of Lords case,

Catnic Components Ltd v Hill & Smith Ltd ''Catnic Components Ltd. v. Hill & Smith Ltd.'' 982R.P.C. 183 is a leading House of Lords decision on the nature of a patent and in particular the methods of claim construction. Background Catnic Components had a patent for a steel lintel, u ...

. Gooding sold it the following year, making a personal profit of £9 million. Another company, Race Electronics, was founded in the 1980s in partnership with Japanese business interests. Gooding was chairman of CBI Wales. He was awarded with a fellowship from the

University of Wales, Newport The University of Wales, Newport (), was a public university based in Newport, Wales, Newport, South Wales, before the merger that formed the University of South Wales in April 2013. The university was founded as a mechanics' institute in 1841 ...

, in 2010. In 2007, Gooding organised a bid to buy the troubled bank

Northern Rock Northern Rock, formerly the Northern Rock Building Society, was a British bank. Based at Regent Centre in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, Northern Rock was originally a building society. It demutualised and became Northern Rock bank in ...

. In 2014, the house in Rhiwderin, near Newport, where Gooding, then 82, lived with his wife Lavinia was destroyed by fire; the couple escaped unharmed.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gooding, Alfred Year of birth missing 20th-century births 2018 deaths High sheriffs of Gwent Officers of the Order of the British Empire People from Risca 20th-century Welsh businesspeople 21st-century Welsh businesspeople