Grace's Guide
British Industrial History
Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 144,990 pages of information and 230,624 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.
Percy Jones (Twinlock)
From Graces Guide
of Twinlock Works, Beckenham, Kent. Twinlock Export Limited: 37 Chancery Lane, London, WC2. Telephone: Chancery 8971. Cables: "Ebullient, London". (1947)
Records available from 1905 to 1993. London Metropolitan Archives. [1]
Percy Jones (Twinlock) Ltd was the major supplier of hand-bound loose-leaf ledgers to the Stationery and Printing trade for approximately the first seventy years of the twentieth century.
1905 Company founded.
1920 Public company.
1932 Patent - Improvements relating to loose leaf ledgers and the like. [2]
1947 Listed Exhibitor - British Industries Fair. Manufacturers of Loose Leaf Books, systems, Mechanised Accounting Equipment. Loose Leaf Metals, Mechanisms and Fittings. (Olympia, Ground Floor, Stand No. B.1455) [3]
1956 Patent - Improvements in or relating to runners or skids. [4]
1961 Manufacturers of loose leaf books and office mechanisms. 900 employees. [5]
1965 Name changed to Twinlock Ltd[6]
1967 Started preparing for the demand likely to arise from the UK's decimalisation; was able to draw on the company's experience with such changes in Australia and South Africa, so expanded the Sheerness factory[7]
1969 Subsidiary Twinlock Computer Services formed a joint venture with a German company on computer data processing accessories and equipment[8]
1970 Acquired Jenkins Fidgeon, computer ancillaries company[9]
1971 Sold the Twinlock Precision Plastics subsidiary to Northel of Leicester[10]
1972 Became a public but unquoted company[11]
1973 Acquired British Pens[12] and bought into a company in the Netherlands
1974 Had 15 factories worldwide[13]. Acquired The Shannon business systems and office equipment group[14] of new Malden, Surrey, the first time that Over-The-Counter shares had been used for a take-over.
1975 Reorganisation of Shannon and the filing systems division to form Datastor[15] but this led to substantial losses.
1976 The National Enterprise Board provided capital to support the company[16]; a rights issue was not practicable because of the OTC nature of the shares but the NEB offer raised concerns from one director and from a competitor.
1978 The company returned to profit[17]
1980 The company was back in losses; sold Cumberland Graphics and Cumberland Pencils to Ofrex but William Mitchell would stay in the Twinlock group[18]
1981 NEB sold much of its holding to Scottish American Investment Trust[19]
1983 Acquired by Acco World Corporation of Chicago[20]
See Also
Sources of Information
- ↑ [1] National Archives
- ↑ [2] Wikipatents
- ↑ 1947 British Industries Fair p150
- ↑ [3] Wikipatents
- ↑ 1961 Dun and Bradstreet KBE
- ↑ The Times, Feb 09, 1965
- ↑ The Times, Mar 16, 1970
- ↑ The Times, Feb 17, 1969
- ↑ The Times Feb 02, 1970
- ↑ The Times, Feb 18, 1971
- ↑ The Times, Oct 23, 1972
- ↑ The Times, Sep 13, 1973
- ↑ The Times, Nov 11, 1974
- ↑ The Times, Dec 10, 1974
- ↑ The Times, Sep 18, 1975
- ↑ The Times Jul 28, 1976
- ↑ The Times, Oct 27, 1978
- ↑ The Times, Nov 07, 1980
- ↑ The Times, Jun 30, 1982
- ↑ The Times, Sep 30, 1983