Castletown Thermostats
Castletown Thermostats was established as a subsidiary of Otter Controls.
The company started by making bimetallic thermostats for use in various industries.
1960s the market for electric kettles was growing, and Castletown extended its manufacturing plant to produce and test a new device for controlling kettles.
1979 Castletown Thermostats and Otter Controls were separated into independent companies, with John Taylor becoming Chairman of Castletown.
1981 Castletown Thermostats changed its name to Strix Ltd
1984 Eddie Davies was appointed as Chief Executive of Strix, with Taylor remaining as Chairman.
During the 20 years from 1979, the company developed several successful product series, expanded worldwide, sold over 200 million thermostat controls for electric kettles, and received several Queen's Awards and other awards.
2000 Strix raised £50M of capital in order to expand into the new growth market of coffee makers.
2005 ABN AMRO Capital led a leveraged buyout of Strix.
Strix now employs 1000 people, holds over 600 patents, and turns over more than £100 million per year. Strix controls are incorporated into electric kettles from many leading manufacturers, and it is estimated that they are used over one billion times per day worldwide, by over 20% of the world's population.
See Also
Sources of Information
- Wikipedia [1]