35 Years of Gemcell: Celebrate the Journey with Our Special Anniversary Issue
August 3, 2026
What were you doing back in 1991? Maybe you weren’t on the planet yet. Maybe you were at school, or maybe you were in the earlier stages of your career, dreaming big dreams and making big plans.
Here at Gemcell, an idea was forming – an idea to bring the very best Australian independent electrical wholesalers together to go toe-to-toe with the international conglomerates that were an increasing presence in the market, enabling collaboration, and better deals from suppliers, and ultimately stronger local businesses, and stronger local communities.
What started out as a small NSW based group grew and grew, and today Gemcell is the organisation you know well.
It’s been 35 years of growth. It’s been 35 years of stories, of people and events.
So, to celebrate, we’ve put together a very special edition of our popular magazine, Electrical Gems.
We journey back to the early 90s, take a look at how Gemcell came into being, and chart the progress over the decades that followed – while at the same time highlighting key national and international events that took place, too.
We’ve dug through the archives to find stories that are worth retelling, pictures that really capture a moment in time, and hear from some of the people involved in Gemcell today about what makes the organisation so valuable to them.
Of course, we also dig out some of our favourite jokes that have been told too – well, those we can still publish!
We hope you enjoy the issue as much as we’ve enjoyed putting it together, and we look forward to whatever the next few decades hold.
Gemcell is a community as much as it is a buying group. We want to support our wholesale members, our suppliers and of course our contractors to be as successful as they possibly can be, because together we are stronger.
Anyway, you better get reading. That coffee’s getting cold.
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