Neil Barron's teenage invention set his mother's hedge on fire. His latest is making millions globally.

Jonathon Hill reports

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PROFESSOR Neil Barron is obsessed with his latest invention.

The former Rolls-Royce engineer-turned-university lecturer, who grew up in the Vale of Glamorgan close to the airport where his late father was based as a pilot, now spends his down time surfing a few hundred yards from his home in Rhossili.

He also enjoys watching videos of thieves trying to get through the bike locks he's creating from his company's base in Swansea, which have catapulted his business - named Litelok - to sit among the fastest-growing companies in Britain.

His best creations, many of which he's thought up in an old railway carriage in his back garden, have been inspired by his own interests. They include a surfboard with a tablet in it which can connect to the internet at sea - something of an influencer's paradise well before its time, created as it was six years before the iPad, commissioned by Intel and named a Time magazine invention of the year.

But it's his bike locks which have truly taken off and which he began thinking about after he lost a third beloved bike to thieves within a couple of years.

With the financial backing of the Welsh Government via the Development Bank of Wales and after teaming up with Swansea University, he has spent five years creating a new hardcore bike lock, which he's boldly named Barronium.

Videos sent in to the company from customers have shown the locks are proving very effective in holding off thieves for long enough for them to give up or be chased off.

"They're basically so hard they turn the tools thieves are using back on themselves," said Prof Barron.

So protective is he of his creation that he only tells his 28 staff at his modest base on an industrial estate in Fforestfach "what they need to know".