Group Rhodes: Wakefield family firm that started in tinker's trade and now helps make aircraft and supercars celebrates 200 years in business

Rhodes was on a mission to mechanise the tinsmith – or tinker’s – trade and make items like cutlery and oil cans more quickly and efficiently.

While the company, now called Group Rhodes, has evolved hugely since then, including with several changes of ownership, it still retains a family feel with its chief executive Mark Ridgway’s father and grandfather having been key parts of the company’s journey down the generations.

These days the company has several different divisions but with an overarching focus on manufacturing bespoke machinery for some of the world’s biggest businesses.

As he reflects on the firm’s 200 years in operation, Mr Ridgway, who has been part of the company since 1985 and in 2011 was awarded an OBE for services to industry, tells The Yorkshire Post he feels himself to be “standing on the shoulders of giants”.

“Everyone I work with is standing on the shoulders of those who have come before because it is not a usual thing,” he says. “Without them we wouldn’t be here and the business wouldn’t be doing what it is doing today.”

In the 1950s, the company began an international sales drive, assisted by Harry Ridgway’s invention of the world’s first commercial hydraulic shear and press brake, patented in 1943.

In 1961, the Joseph Rhodes company was acquired by Lindustries but Harry, Mr Ridgway’s grandfather, continued with the business up to his retirement in 1967.

In the late 1970s, the company was sold to Hanson Trust but in 1984 Harry’s son Ian Ridgway, who was a commercial director, led a management buyout alongside production director John Blacker.

Mark Ridgway joined his father Ian in the business a year later and became managing director in 2000 with his father continuing as chairman until his death in 2021. Mark says his father and Mr Blacker effectively saved the firm and his family connections give him an emotional bond with the business.

“My grandfather joined as a boot boy in 1910, he managed to get a scholarship to Leeds University and became chief draughtsman at the age of 21.

“My father basically saved the company in 1984 when Hanson, who were asset strippers, acquired the whole group for £32m and sold the head office in London for £16m so got the whole thing for half-price.

“My grandfather helped significantly into his retirement, my father saved the company and so I feel that I’m standing on the shoulders of giants.”

As the firm’s ownership structure evolved down the generations, so did its business operations.

The change of name to Group Rhodes happened in 2004 following the acquisition of Craven Fawcett, a clayworking machinery specialist. Other additions to the group have included the likes of Beauford Engineers, Chester Hydraulics, Hallamshire Engineering Services and Atkin Automation. Its most recent addition is British Jeffrey Diamonds (BJD) Crushers, originally founded in Wakefield in 1897.

Mr Ridgway says the group sees particular potential in this business, whose work includes machinery for crushing metal for use in electric vehicles.

This year the company, which makes machinery for the creation of components in civil and military aircraft, was awarded global patents for its technology which assists aircraft to weigh less. It also makes machinery for components in supercars such as Aston Martin. Its Craven Fawcett arm is involved in a project to build the UK’s first ‘net zero brick facility’.

In its last published results for the 12 months to August 2023, the overall group recorded revenue of £12.5m – up almost £2m on the year before. Mr Ridgway says it hopes to be generating turnover of around £16m next year.

But it is still a relatively small fish in its specialist field: “We are quite a small company to be able to be doing what we are with large manufacturing equipment. The majority of our competitors are much larger than ourselves,” Mr Ridgway says. "We have a very agile business model, they tend to go with mass and it is a different approach. The danger is on the larger contracts we have to make sure the finance is in place as well as the skill set and the physical capacity.

“We have to be careful about the territories we take on and the risks associated with the projects. In the past we have taken on some quite risky projects and territories. We have learnt from our mistakes.

“But equally UK Export Finance has been very supportive with the general export facility. We have got quite a large order book for the United States and they have been helping us with that and ensuring we have the right skills. Skills are probably the biggest risk to our business, then capacity. That is something hopefully the new Government is going to address.”

He says the business is very much heading in the right direction after coming through a challenging period during the pandemic.

“Manufacturing equipment as an SME when everyone was protecting cash and no one was investing was a huge challenge. Our business model couldn’t have been worse for Covid. We are now growing quite substantially. We are not large now but will probably be turning over £16m next year give or take.”

In a sign of its growing confidence, the firm has expanded its operations into a new 25,000 sq ft premises adjacent to its manufacturing facility in Wakefield.

Mr Ridgway adds that it is also hoping to open another site to allow it to handle larger orders for the aerospace industry. While planning permission is yet to be submitted, he says discussions have been held with Wakefield Council about the idea.

“We don’t want to move too far away to make these machines because the alternative is not to take these orders and our competitors will if we don’t.”

Mr Ridgway is an influential figure in the manufacturing industry as a past president of UK’s Manufacturing Technology Association and current chair of MMEA, an umbrella organisation of 10 trade associations which manufacture machinery for different sectors.

He says that being awarded an OBE for his contribution to the sector was “very humbling” but takes equal pride in the two Queens’ Awards for innovation and international trade that his company won.

“It is great for the business, that’s the main thing,” he says. “As far as the business is concerned, despite our small size we do punch above our weight. We have these awards which reflect a certain degree of expertise. We are staying with trends as the world changes. You’ve got to be the best at what you do otherwise you don’t get a look in.”