User:Terry macdonald/Crabtree Vickers

Crabtree Vickers ...

Crabtree Vickers – Britain’s only manufacturer of sheet fed offset printing machines, derived from a history of design, flare and technological innovation acknowledged world wide dating back as far as 1849.

History

1849 In Otley, William Dawson employed David Payne and Robert Elliot and started an iron foundry in the town

1858 The first Wharfedale machine was built by Dawson and Payne – it was improved and copied worldwide and provided for half a century of company growth

1871 Five Leeds engineers established George Mann & Company concerned, almost exclusively since its inception, with lithographic printing machines and were the manufacturers of the first rotary offset press

1893 Fred Waite, a former Dawson apprentice, joined Jason Saville, a Bradford engineer, to built a newspaper wrapping machine and too founded Waite and Saville

1895 Richard Wadsworth Crabtree and Alfred Horsfield founded the RW Crabtree Group of Companies. Initially textile machinery manufacturers, they entered the field of printing machinery in 1905 and in 1920 built their first newspaper press.

1909 Payne & Sons was incorporated and the firm developed the Cossar two cylinder web machine – the famous flat bed newspaper printing press

1947 Vickers Limited acquired George Mann & Company, by this time one of the world’s foremost lithographic printing press manufacturer, building the versatile Fast Three and Fast Five presses that popularised offset printing and developing its immensely successful perfector presses.

1965 Dawson, Payne and Elliot joined RW Crabtree Group to form the country’s largest printing press manufacturer. The same year Vickers Limited acquired the RW Crabtree Group of Companies

1966 Vickers Ltd acquired Waite and Saville and Crabtree-Vickers was established as Britain’s foremost printing machinery manufacturer.

1974 JT Macdonald and David Lee, both former apprentices with the RW Crabtree Group formed Saddleton Ltd to service and remanufacture used Crabtree presses

1977 Crabtree-Vickers Leeds was formed – the only British manufacturer of a range of sheet and web fed offset printing presses and the home of CV newspress

1993 Saddleton Machinery Ltd secure world wide exclusive rights to manufacture the entire range of Crabtree sheet fed printing machines. The same year Crabtree Printing Machinery was incorporated

1994 Crabtree Printing Machinery secure exclusive rights to manufacture the Japanese designed JM Printa X Perfector – book printing machine. The first British designed multi colour for a decade was launched as a Crabtree 928S

1995 Another first – the 965PCX was added to the range of book printing machines – launched at Drupa 95

1996 A direct replacement to the SP56 was launched as the 956S Crabtree Printing Machinery secure world exclusive rights to manufacture the entire range of Autofeeds sheet fed feeders

1997 The marquee lives on ….