Grace's Guide To British Industrial History

Registered UK Charity (No. 115342)

Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 165,122 pages of information and 246,492 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.

Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 147,919 pages of information and 233,587 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.

Kelvinator

From Graces Guide
April 1935.
1938.
1954. From Good Housekeeping magazine of July.

Maker of domestic refrigerators, of Gray's Inn Road, London (1935)

of Bromborough, Wirral

British Kelvinator

1926 Private company - Kelvinator Ltd - registered[1]. This was a British unit of an American parent company[2]

1927 Its domestic refrigerators had been installed in 2,500 new homes[3]

1946 The company moved to Crewe

1951 Name changed.

1956 Nash-Kelvinator's factory at Crewe sustained major damage in a fire[4]. The company moved to Bromborough, Wirral.

1956 Name changed.

1961 Manufacturers of refrigeration equipment. [5]

1967 One of 3 British and 2 US refrigerator manufacturers studied to find out how the business could be improved - prices could be cut by 5 percent through improved use of labour-saving methods, both in production and back-office[6]

1968 EMI's Tricity Cookers was thought to be interested in buying the company - it was said it would concentrate the factory on manufacturing freezers[7]

1980 Acquired by SFIME of Luxemburg; name changed to Kelco.[8]

Became part of Candy Holdings, of Italy, maker of domestic appliances[9]

By 1995 production at the Wirral factory had increased by "500 percent in 15 years"

2002 Production ended at Bromborough

US Kelvinator

1914 Kelvinator began the manufacture of refrigerators

1927 The American Kelvinator Corporation had changed its name to Nash-Kelvinator[10]

1954 Nash-Kelvinator advertised its refrigerator in the UK as made in England

1958 The US Nash-Kelvinator company merged with Hudson Motor Car Co to form the American Motors Corporation[11]

1968 Kelvinator Appliance Division was sold to White Consolidated Industries[12]

By 2000 Electrolux owned the Kelvinator and Frigidaire brands in the USA[13]

See Also

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Sources of Information

  1. The Times, Sep 14, 1926
  2. The Times, Sep 09, 1968
  3. The Times, Jan 07, 1927
  4. The Times, Mar 18, 1959
  5. 1961 Dun and Bradstreet KBE
  6. The Times, Aug 07, 1967
  7. The Times, Sep 09, 1968
  8. 1980 Annual report
  9. The Times, June 01, 1995
  10. The Times, Jul 23, 1937
  11. The Times, Nov 15, 1958
  12. The Times, Jun 14, 1968
  13. The Times, May 09, 2000
  • UK White Goods website [1]