Crystalate Manufacturing Company

Crystalate Manufacturing Company Ltd. was a British plastics and later electronic components manufacturing company that operated in one form or another from August 1901 through August 1990. It is best known for its gramophone records (under many record labels) made of moulded Crystalate plastic.

The company was founded 2 August 1901,[1] to make billiard balls and other items as well as gramophone records,[1] using a plastic formulation branded Crystalate, licensed from its American patent holder.[1] The company claimed in advertisements to be the first to press disk records in the UK, a claim neither proven nor disproven,[1] and over time focused more on the music market, producing gramophone record production matrices for more than 20 other companies by 1906,[1] though not operating a record label itself until the 1920s.

After merging with Sound Recording Co. Ltd. (exactly how and when remain unclear),[1] Crystalate Manufacturing became, in 1920, the third company (and the second British one) to operate the Imperial label,[1] and by the mid-1920s had four distribution depots in England and one each in Scotland and Ireland.[1] On 30 January 1928, the company re-incorporated in Golden Green, Kent,[1] as Crystalate Gramophone Record Manufacturing Co. Ltd..[1] It subsequently established affiliates in France and Germany, set up a new headquarters and studio, Crystalate House, in London,[1] and bought a one-third interest in the American Record Corporation conglomerate in 1929.[1] Brands pressed by Crystalate included Crown and Rex Records.[2]

The company saw financial difficulties, like so many others, throughout the Great Depression. After years of stiff competition from EMI (later the fourth Imperial Records producer) and British Homophone, among a total of 22 British record labels in the mid-1930s,[1] Crystalate Manufacturing's troubled record section was bought out by Decca Records[1][3] for US$200,000.[3] but it continued making non-recording products as Crystalate Ltd.[1]

The company continued on in the electronic components industry at least into the early 1990s as Crystalate Holdings, which manufactured resistors in the UK, with annual sales of $180 million as of 1990.[4] In November 1983 Crystalate bought Royal Worcester for £23 million in a hostile takeover in order to acquire Welwyn Electronics, selling the china and ceramics divisions to the London Rubber Company and Coors Porcelain Company the next year.[5][6][7] Crystalate was chaired in the late 1980s by Lord Jenkin of Roding.[8] In 1989 the company issued a profit warning — net profits had plateaued since 1984[8] — and in 1990 Vishay Intertechnology bid to buy Crystalate Holdings,[4][9] but was turned down in favour of a British company, TT Group, in August 1990.[9][10] TT Group became TT Electronics in 2000.[11]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound. Vol. 1: A-L (2nd ed.). Taylor & Francis Group. 2004. entry "Crystalate Gramophone Record Manufacturing Co., Ltd.". ISBN 0-203-48427-4. Retrieved 2 July 2011. In turn citing "Andrews 1983/1984" for most of this information.
  2. ↑ Tolley, Trevor (1 September 2010). "British Crown Records". IAJRC Journal. International Association of Jazz Record Collectors.
  3. 1 2 "Decca Buys Record Unit Of Crystalate Company". Wall Street Journal. 16 March 1937. Retrieved 2 July 2011.
  4. 1 2 "Vishay will go to aid of Crystalate". Philadelphia Inquirer. 19 May 1990. Retrieved 2 July 2011.
  5. ↑ "Worcester Factory Ownership". Worcester Porcelain Museum. Retrieved 30 September 2014.
  6. ↑ Jones, Stan (December 2007). "Welwyn and Worcester" (PDF). History of Technology Newsletter December 2007. IET. p. 13. Retrieved 30 September 2014.
  7. ↑ "Company analysis - Crystalate. Welwyn Well Won". Investors chronicle. 71. Throgmorton Publications. 1985. p. 52.
  8. 1 2 Wilson, Andrew (1 August 1989). "Warning hits Crystalate". Herald Scotland. Retrieved 17 July 2011.
  9. 1 2 "Vishay loses in bid for British firm". Philadelphia Inquirer. 22 August 1990. Retrieved 2 July 2011.
  10. ↑ Cole, Robert (31 March 1993). "TT Group results beat expectations". The Independent. London. Retrieved 2 July 2011.
  11. ↑ "About Us - Profile / History". TTElectronics.com. TT Electronics. Retrieved 2 July 2011.
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