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Post by timberman on Oct 18, 2007 14:16:18 GMT
Word on the street is One of the longest running British, ish companies Wadkin have gone into administration.
A sad day.
I suspect there will be an orderly queue forming to buy the parts & service division.
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Post by Scrit on Oct 18, 2007 18:22:41 GMT
Again? Oh dear. Maybe it's not too much to be sad about. The Thomas Robinson Group debacle of the 1980s which saw Robinson's used as a vehicle to acquire Wadkin then subsequently to absorb almost all of the remaining British woodworking machinery manufacturers is perhaps not that well known even within the trade, but between 1985 and 1991 this conglomerate absorbed and closed Thomas Robinson of Rochdale (est 1847 and therefore more than 50 years older than Wadkin) - now an industrial estate, Dominion of Halifax - foundry sold-off and factory to housing estate, W. A. Fell of Windermere (specialist copy lathes and sanding stuff) - housing I'm told, Ryburn-Pickles (stair trenchers) and Ryburn Woodworking Machinery (machinery dealers and specialist saw mill package builders) before turning in on itself and closing the Bursgreen factories at Houghton-le-Spring, Co. Durham and Trawden, Colne (CNC and pin routers in the main), the Evenwood sheet metal plant in Teesside and the bandsaw factory at Scarborough. This cut-back also led, in part, to the demise of Cooksley's in London - housing again - as they were selling Wadkin products and also doing sub-con machining for the Leicester firm (as indeed were Dominion). Wadkin went under in 1991 and since that time lost the enormous works at Green Lane in Leicester, complete with three automatic pallet-fed CNC machining centres ending up in industrial units out at Coalville in Leicestershire. Indeed a sad end for a once great company.
Just for good measure the reputed author of this tragedy received a Queens Award to Industry, no less - for destroying an entire sector of British industry! Ain't life great
By the 1990s the only other woodworking firms of note left in the UK were Wilson Brothers of Leeds (est. 1851) who died a slow death through the 1990s, Startrite of Gillingham in Kent who fell foul of the near collapse of the parent 600 Group and were eventually bought-out and radically downsized by Record of Sheffield, and finally Stennor of Tiverton (wide bandsaws and band resaws and another Victorian firm), Sedgwick of Leeds (a post war firm) and Multico of Redhill in Surrey who were bought out of receivership in the early 1990s and moved to Harlow in Essex before transplanting to France several years ago. So now the option to buy British has become a little more difficult!
Scrit
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Post by timberman on Oct 18, 2007 21:49:33 GMT
Scrit,
It all makes depressing reading doesn't it.
There doesn't seem to be any good news these days on the British industrial manufacturing front.
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