It is interesting to note that Goh Ban Huat (GBH), founded in 1897, does not take its name from the founder, the late Goh Leng Soon, the grandfather of the company’s current executive chairman Alex Goh Tai Seng and managing director Tony Goh Tai He.

Instead, Leng Soon retained the family name of Goh and added the phrase “Ban Huat” to form the company’s name, as he liked the auspiciousness of the Hokkien phrase that literally means “ten thousand wealth” or abundant fortune.

While it is common to find the GBH brand in the bathrooms and toilets of Malaysian households, the company did not start its business producing sanitary ware.

Its first product was the brown glazed ceramic cup that was used to collect latex from rubber trees. The ceramic cup was its sole product in its early years, and it was only in the 1920s that it started making flower pots.

Goh Siang Kow, father of Tony and Alex, took over the family business in the 1930s. It was then that GBH ventured into producing hand-formed clay sewage pipes.

Some 20 years later, the company was able to manufacture machine-made clay sewage pipes for the country, which was then under British colonial rule. GBH also began manufacturing sanitary ware with organic technology.

In the 1960s, it began using foreign technology and equipment to produce sanitary ware. Alan Goh, the eldest son of Siang Kow, was sent to Stoke-on-Trent, the home of the pottery industry in England, to learn the A-to-Z of making sanitary ware.

The 1970s could be seen as a watershed era in the company’s growth. The World Bank had provided some funds to Kuala Lumpur City Hall to modernise the city’s sewage system and GBH imported flexible jointed clay pipes from Australia that could meet the local authority’s required quality.

In 1979, GBH built its own plant in Segambut, and began to produce flexible jointed clay pipes to replace the imported wares.

Tony had said on many occasions that “if you dig up any part of the country now, chances are 75% of the pipes are from Goh Ban Huat’s plant in Jalan Segambut.”

GBH continued to grow into the 1980s. It was able to ride the huge boom in demand for rubber gloves, sparked by the fear of AIDS. While it did not make rubber gloves, GBH pioneered the production of ceramic moulds that were essential in the manufacturing of rubber gloves. The company was listed in 1989.

In the 1990s, GBH became the first company outside Australia to manufacture dual flush toilets for export to that country. It later introduced the product to the domestic market.

In 1993, GBH acquired the assets of New Zealand ceramics manufacturer Crown Lynn, and ventured into the high-end porcelain tableware segment.

Today, Crown Lynn products compete with international renowned brands such as Royal Doulton, Wedgwood and Noritake, and are used by some palaces in the country, government ministries, and Malaysian embassies and high commissions overseas, among others.

While GBH seems to have sailed safely through the past 100 years, it has not always been smooth going.

In 1994, privately owned Indah Water Konsortium Sdn Bhd (IWK) was awarded a concession to undertake nationwide sewerage services, which had previously come under the responsibility of local authorities. It was expected that there would be huge demand for clay pipes and GBH had responded by building a 70,000 tonnes per annum pipe plant in Segambut.

However, IWK did not prove to be big success and it was taken over by the government, through the Minister of Finance Incorporated, in June 2000.

In recent years, GBH has worked on improving its sanitary ware, producing higher-margin products such as vacuum-assisted flush toilet — usually seen on aircraft — for export to New Zealand and the Netherlands. It even makes toilets decorated with Swarovski crystal that are targeted at Middle Eastern customers.

However, the jewel in its crown would have to be its production facility which offers a full range of big-diameter sewage pipes, a niche market with high entry barriers because of the sophisticated technology required.

This article appeared in Corporate page of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 762, July 6-July 12, 2009