Hans Renold

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Hans Renold (1852?-1943) was a Swiss engineer. The son of a burgher family in Aarau, Switzerland, Hans came to Manchester, England at the age of 21 and found work with a firm of machinery exporters.

In 1879 he purchased a small textile-chain making business in Salford, England from James Slater and so founded the Hans Renold Co. the firm which still bears his name today. The following year he invented the Bush Roller chain which represented a great advance on the common pin-and-link chains of the day and which laid the design foundation upon which all modern precision roller chains are based.

Hans Renold, however, was not only a brilliant engineer and a model employer who built around him a very skilled labour force, but was also a very astute businessman. From the outset, Hans Renold's business, started on £300 borrowed from his prospective father-in-law, prospered and he steadily ploughed back his growing profits into premises and plant. In 1889 a rapid expansion of the business took place and a new factory was built.

Hans Renold had long been devoted to the ideal of establishing a firm sense of community among his employees and their families and in 1909 gave his active support to the establishment of the Hans Renold Social Union for the encouragement of a wide range of leisure activities.

After his death in 1943, Priestnall Hey, his former home adjacent to Renold works, was presented by his son for the use of the Social Union.

Hans Renold had four children Hans Renold, Charles Garonne Renold, Amy Renold and Mary Renold