W & T Avery Ltd.

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W & T Avery Ltd. is a British manufacturer of weighing machines. The company was founded in the early 18th century and took the name W & T Avery in 1818. Having been taken over by GEC in 1979 the company was later renamed into GEC-Avery. The company became Avery Berkel in 1993 when GEC acquired the Dutch company Berkel. After the take over by Weigh-Tronix in 2000 the company was again renamed to be called Avery Weigh-Tronix. The company is based in Smethwick, West Midlands, United Kingdom.

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[edit] History

The undocumented origin of the company goes back to 1730 when James Ford established the business in Digbeth. On Joseph Balden the then owner's death in 1813 William and Thomas Avery took over his scalemaking business and in 1818 renamed it W & T Avery. The business rapidly expanded and in 1885 they owned three factories: the Atlas Works in West Bromwich, the Mill Lane Works in Birmingham and the Moat Lane Works in Digbeth. In 1891 the business became a public limited liability company with a board of directors and in 1894 became a public limited company with shares quoted on the London Stock Exchange. In 1895 the company bought the legendary Soho Foundry in Smethwick, a former steam engine factory owned by James Watt & Co. In 1897 the move was complete and the steam engine business was gradually converted to pure manufacture of weighing machines. The turn of the century was marked by managing director William Hipkins' determined efforts in broadening the renown of the Avery brand and transforming the business into a specialist manufacturer of weighing machines.[1] By 1914 the company occupied an area of 32,000m² and had some 3000 employees.

In the inter-war period the growth continued with the addition of specialised shops for cast parts, enamel paints and weighbridge assembly and the product range diversified into counting machines, testing machines, automatic packing machines and petrol pumps. During the second world war the company also produced various types of heavy guns. At that time the site underwent sever damage from parachute mines and incendiary bombs.

The profound changes after World War II led to the close of the foundry, the introduction of load cells and electronic weighing with the simultaneous gradual disappearance of purely mechanical weighing machines.

The continued expansion was partly achieved through a series of acquisitions of other companies. The most important are[2]:

  • 1899 Parnall & Sons Ltd.
  • 1920/1928 Southall and Smith Ltd.
  • 1920 Saml. Denison & Son Ltd. (name changed to Avery-Denison Ltd. in 1970)
  • 1925 Oertling Ltd.
  • 1931 The Tan Sad Chair Co. (1931) Ltd.
  • 1932 Avery-Hardoll Ltd.
  • 1953/1976 Pump Maintenance Ltd.
  • 1959 Geo Driver & Son Ltd.; merged in 1966 with Southall and Smith Ltd. to form Driver Southall Ltd.
  • 1968 Stanton Redcroft Ltd.
  • 1973 Telomex Ltd.

After almost a century of national and international expansion the company was taken over by GEC in 1979. Keith Hodgkinson, managing director at the time, completed the turn-around from mechanical to electronic weighing with a complete overhaul of the product range of retail scales and industrial platform scales. In 1993 GEC took over the Dutch-based company Berkel and the Avery-Berkel name was introduced. In 2000 the business was in turn acquired by the US-American company Weigh-Tronix, who already owned Salter, and is today operating as Avery Weigh-Tronix.

  1. ^ Hipkins died on the Titanic in 1912.
  2. ^ Source: Chapter Four of The General Electric Company Limited and Averys Limited: A Report on the Proposed Merger

[edit] Literature

  • Ernest Pendarves Leigh-Bennett, Weighing the world: an impression after two hundred years of the past history of an English house of business, and of its present activities and influence throughout the world of weighing, 1730-1930, Birmingham, 1930
  • Walter Keith Vernon Gale, Soho Foundry, Birmingham, 1948
  • The Monopolies and Merger Commission, The General Electric Company Limited and Averys Limited: A Report on the Proposed Merger, London, 1979, ISBN 0 10 176530 4

[edit] See also

[edit] External Links