W hy would a musician find himself at the head of an expanding lighting company in Witney? The answer is that he is a synaesthete. And if, like me, you don’t immediately know what one of those is when it is at home, it is someone who sees sound, or notes, in terms of different colours.

And of course producing modern lighting equipment has much to do with mixing colours — even for white light.

Alan Wyn-Davies, 55, studied music at Jesus College, Oxford, but soon discovered he had an unstoppable passion for designing electronics — originally more in sound than in light.

He said: “I worked for years as a freelance consultant. For instance I put the first voice into the Barbie doll. Then I found I was in my element working with light, originally designing illuminated signs that go on bars in hotels and pubs to advertise the various drinks. This led to my working with LEDs (light emitting diodes).”

Now he is chairman of DFx Technology, which employs 40 staff at its Witney headquarters and turns over about £4m a year.

His wife Liz, whom he met when they were both singing in an Oxford choir in 1980, is managing director.

There are three divisions to the business: low energy lighting, marketed under the brand name Planetsaver; energy saving industrial controls and internet-based renewable energy monitoring and control systems, marketed as Remsense.

Clearly Dr Wyn-Davies believes strongly in what he is doing — and he is putting his money where his mouth is.

He said: “Everything we have is in this business — because we know we have a good business here.

“We re-invest all the time, but of course there are always risks involved in a growing business. It needs a lot of personal commitment.”

And it seems commitment is needed from all the family too. His son Charles, 21, now studying law at Durham University, has been involved in registering the company’s 18 patents — which helped the firm become a finalist in the 2010 Oxfordshire Business Awards.

And his daughter Katherine, 19, a would-be interior decorator, advises on design matters.

But what is the secret of running a manufacturing business in the UK? After all, only 9.8 per cent of us are now employed in the manufacturing sector here, as opposed to about 25 per cent in Germany.

Dr Wyn-Davies said: “Our growth is due to our ability to design and manufacture products within the UK to meet specific market demands in very short time scales.”

Certainly his manufacturing ability has impressed his local MP — who happens also to be Prime Minister — when he visited earlier this year.

David Cameron said: “I was delighted to visit this forward-thinking small business in my constituency.

“They are a fine example of the many small businesses that contribute so much to our economy and I will follow their future progress with interest.”

Dr Wyn-Davies said he reckoned the secret of running a manufacturing business here was “to make sure that most of what you make is machine-built. Only about ten to 15 per cent of what we build here is made by hand.”

The revolutionary selling point behind DFx’s Planetsaver lighting range is that the LED sets could one day replace the familiar fluorescent tubes that so many of us have attached to the underside of our kitchen cabinets — and which we all too often curse for their habit of burning out.

The Planetsaver replacements fit standard light fittings, last about five times as long and are up to 90 per cent more energy efficient. The only down-side is that they cost about twice as much each (though prices are falling).

Dr Wyn-Davies said: “One day the big boys will start producing something similar. But at the moment we have got under the radar, as it were and my main job is to let people know we are here selling these things.”

And the company’s second string to its bow, namely its energy monitoring equipment, seems equally innovative.

Much of this concentrates on refrigeration and cooling technologies, particularly in the beverage business.

Dr Wyn-Davies said: “It is not widely known but 80 per cent of the cold drinks carbon footprint is caused by refrigeration at point of sale. A major company is now trialling our monitoring equipment in Turkey and we are hoping for a major breakthrough here soon.”

The company has produced a small control that can be fitted to existing refrigeration units at point of sale and is also selling devices to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for incorporation in the units of the future.

The third company division, RemSense, also has a green future — and its main customer, the Cottsway Housing Association, is just along the road from DFx’s offices and assembly plant.

The device, which Dr Wyn-Davies hopes will be taken up by many other providers of social housing in a bid to combat fuel poverty, enables occupiers of social housing to regulate their room and water heating by use of a switch which controls sophisticated heat pump technology that can be monitored remotely.

In other words, any faults can be picked up remotely without the need of a visit from an engineer.

Dr Wyn-Davies said: “In essence heat pumps work like a refrigerator in reverse” — a remark which led me to understand how all the different technologies marketed here hang together — even the LED was originally used for supplying lighting in refrigerators.

All in all, here’s hoping that “going under the radar” will last long enough for this small company to continue to expand — and move into planned larger premises — before the big boys of this world find a way to move in on its new technologies.