Clavell Bate and Nephews

of Vulcan Works, Bradley Hall Road, Nelson.

1948 Company founded.

1958 'NELSON ENGINEERING FIRM TO STEP UP PRODUCTION. They're stepping up production at Clavell Bate and Nephews, the expanding Nelson firm who are helping to bring, in some small measure, a diverse selection of industries to the area. The firm has taken over a section of Hindley Bros. Ltd., Nelson Mills, who have a financial interest in the firm. It will ultimately mean an increase in the number on the Clavell Bate payroll. Clavell Bate and Nephews started up in 1948 as an aluminium foundry, graduating to precision work on parts for agricultural machines. Then they began to receive contracts from the big sweet manufacturers, repairing and renovating old wrapping machines. In 1954 they started production a fully-automatic perfume-wrapping machine of their own design, which sold at about £3,000. Then, in 1955, in a small red-bricked building at the bottom of Water Street — a building which has been in its time most things from an undertaker’s headquarters to a foundry — the firm started production on the Clavell A1 sausage-wrapping machine, the only one of its kind in the world. It was the brain-child of 28-year-old Mr. Frederick Bate, the firm’s designer and works manager. (His father, Mr. Douglas Bate, is partner in the firm). Besides sausages, it wraps many things, including Swiss rolls, crumpets, Eccles cake, bandages, lint, in fact any article which has a regular shape. In previous machines the article to be wrapped had been pushed and pummelled through various processes, so that anything soft, like sausage or a Swiss roll, would be unrecognisable by the time it came out at the other end. But the Clavell machine changed all that. The article remains stationary while the mechanism is brought to it. A Swiss roll, for example, can be wrapped and heat-sealed in cellophane without being damaged at all. To-day, the firm employs 50 people. Mr. Douglas Bate told a Leader reporter yesterday, however, that the acquirement of part of the Hindley premises will mean an increase in the number of employees, but he is not sure by how many.'

See Also

Loading...