Caradon plc
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| Fate | Acquired by Honeywell |
|---|---|
| Successor | Novar Controls |
| Founded | 1921 |
| Defunct | 1 April 2005 |
| Headquarters | Weybridge, Surrey, England, UK |
Novar plc (Formerly Caradon plc) was an international building supplies group based in the United Kingdom. Novar was formed in 1921 as Metal Box plc from the coming together of several businesses and trades, including canning and printing. By the 1970s it was a market leader in these fields. In the 1980s the company diversified into building supplies and at its peak consisted of 30 companies supplying products to the construction and DIY industries.
After selling the plumbing parts of the business under the Caradon Brand in 2000 it finally became Novar Plc, in 2005 It was bought by Honeywell, and its UK business was finally broken up effectively becoming defunct.
The canned food industry ("tinning" in the UK) has been a used to preserve food for around a century. Before this time it was common to buy food either salted, dried or as fresh as they could be, The industry's that produced these cans, or "tins," were small and usually family owned, and only mildly able to compete with one another because the market was so large.
One of these family can makers was Robert Barclay, who had also owned a printing business since 1855, Barclay who printed Cheques for and was a distant relative of the founders of Barclays Bank, would eventually join his brother-in-law, John Fry in forming the company Barclay & Fry where together they would work to develop the technique of offset lithography, with the intention of using this process to print biscuit tin labels.
Decorated tins were highly popular in Great Britain at this time and many homes had big collections of them, but before this process most tins were hand painted,
After Barclays death this new printing process would be leased to Huntley, Boorne & Stevens, who made Biscuit tin's for the company Huntley & Palmer and used it to apply labels to their tins, as the tin manufacturing industry grew with the innovation, labour costs became lower, and profits higher, until the Trade Boards Act was introduced witch forced tin manufacturers to improve the conditions and wages for its staff, this would cause some of these tin manufacturing companies to band together and form a UK Tin Box Makers Union to protect their business and its practices
During the First World War the tinning industry saw increased business manufacturing ration tins for British troops, with the UK Government placing wartime restrictions on tin many companies that formed the federation worked closely together and after the war four of them, Hudson Scott, F. Atkins & Co., Henry Grant & Co., and Barclay & Fry, banded together to form the company Allied Tin Box Makers Limited. Though they were essentially one company – using it to control the market and make acquisitions, each member company still essentially remained private and ran its own affairs, in 1922 they opted to change the company name to Metal Box & Printing Industries after establishing comfortable control of the UK market.
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