page_title: W & T Avery
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: W & T Avery / History
caption_attribution_description: Yarloop railway workshops Yarloop, Western Australia Avery scale c1950
context_page_description: W & T Avery Ltd. was a British manufacturer of weighing machines. The company was founded in the early 18th century and took the name W & T Avery in 1818. Having been taken over by GEC in 1979 the company was later renamed into GEC-Avery. The company became Avery Berkel in 1993 when GEC acquired the Dutch company Berkel. After the take over by Weigh-Tronix in 2000 the company was again renamed to be called Avery Weigh-Tronix with Avery Berkel continuing to operate as a brand. The company is based in Smethwick, West Midlands, United Kingdom.
context_section_description: The undocumented origin of the company goes back to 1730 when James Ford established the business in Digbeth. On Joseph Balden the then owner's death in 1813 William and Thomas Avery took over his scalemaking business and in 1818 renamed it W & T Avery. The business rapidly expanded and in 1885 they owned three factories: the Atlas Works in West Bromwich, the Mill Lane Works in Birmingham and the Moat Lane Works in Digbeth. In 1891 the business became a limited company with a board of directors and in 1894 the shares were quoted on the London Stock Exchange. In 1895 the company bought the legendary Soho Foundry in Smethwick, a former steam engine factory owned by James Watt & Co. In 1897 the move was complete and the steam engine business was gradually converted to pure manufacture of weighing machines. The turn of the century was marked by managing director William Hipkins' determined efforts in broadening the renown of the Avery brand and transforming the business into a specialist manufacturer of weighing machines. By 1914 the company occupied an area of 32,000m² and had some 3000 employees.
  In the inter-war period the growth continued with the addition of specialised shops for cast parts, enamel paints and weighbridge assembly and the product range diversified into counting machines, testing machines, automatic packing machines and petrol pumps. During the second world war the company also produced various types of heavy guns. At that time the site underwent severe damage from parachute mines and incendiary bombs.
  From 1931 to 1973 the company occupied the 18th-century Middlesex Sessions House in Clerkenwell as its headquarters.
  Changes in weighing machine technology after World War II led to the closure of the foundry, the introduction of load cells and electronic weighing with the simultaneous gradual disappearance of purely mechanical devices.
  After almost a century of national and international expansion the company was taken over by GEC in 1979. Keith Hodgkinson, managing director at the time, completed the turn-around from mechanical to electronic weighing with a complete overhaul of the product range of retail scales and industrial platform scales. In 1993 GEC took over the Dutch-based company Berkel and the Avery Berkel name was introduced. GEC Avery continued to operate as a part of the Avery Berkel Group.
  In 2000, the business was in turn acquired by the US-American company Weigh-Tronix to form Avery Weigh-Tronix, Avery Berkel continued to operate as a brand of the newly created company with GEC Avery being absorbed by the Avery Berkel brand.
  In 2015, the Avery museum, which had existed for almost nine decades, was closed and the collection dispersed.
caption: Set of scales made by Avery in the 1960s
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