Memories of Stoke-on-Trent people - Ken
Green
Ken Green
A
Life in the Ceramic Tile Industry
section 13
previous: summary
of 1960/67
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1968/1971
and the merger of Johnson's & Richards
H & R
Johnson and Richards Tiles merged in March 1968.
Richards had not been in debt to the bank since 1901.
The assets of Richards were twice those of Johnson.
However, Johnson had a higher production and was much more profitable.
One didn’t need be an economic genius to work out why!
Richards’ plant operated 40 hours a week and Johnson’s plant operated
about three times that number of hours. A
lot was about to change. Reality
had caught up with social ideology.
Within
a day of the agreement being signed, it was made clear that Derek Johnson was
in charge and the “merger” was to be controlled by him.
He told me on day one; “during the merger, Johnson methods will
prevail and Johnson personnel will be in charge.
If we try to evaluate what is best of Richards and what is best of
Johnson this merger will take years”. He
asked what I thought. I said it
was going to be very tough on the Richards personnel and was told; “That is
to be your job. Let them know
that, as time goes by, they will come to their appropriate levels.
The sooner we are truly merged, the better for all of us.”
It was difficult to have to convey this to Richards colleagues who were
my senior and there was considerable scepticism among my other colleagues.
The
older members of Richards Campbell’ senior management left the company
shortly after the merger but, I must say, many of the remaining Richards
personnel went on to hold senior positions in the merged company.
I recall
that John F Kennedy described Nikita Krushchev as; “a man of inherent
intellect unsullied by higher education”.
Derek Johnson (1921/77) was a tough and talented businessman.
He was also a born engineer unsullied by technical education.
He could go into a rabbit warren of a factory (we had many) and visualize
the layout of machinery and conveyors necessary to replicate an established
Johnson system. He was a prime mover in UK post-war ceramic tile manufacture.
His early death was a tragedy for both his company and the British
ceramic tile industry. He had
succeeded his father, Colonel Harry Johnson DSO,TD (1878/1955) who had an
outstanding military record. Nevertheless,
Colonel Harry did not expect the 1939 hostilities to last for long and so Derek
Johnson, following a year on the shop floor, was sent to South Africa in 1939
with a Johnson salesman. Derek gave
his colleague the slip and attempted to enlist.
He was turned down on the basis of his eyesight but a second attempt was
successful. He served throughout
the 39/45 war with a South African Infantry unit and did not see England again
until his return in 1946. He did,
however, seek out fellow H&RJ servicemen in foreign parts when he learned
they were in the vicinity.
Frederick
Plant had been Chief Engineer to H & R Johnson for many years.
At the time of the merger he was near retirement and had passed executive
authority to Howard Riley. He was
my mentor for the few months before his retirement in October 1968.
His knowledge of plant and people was invaluable.
The Johnson culture was very different (different, not better, not worse)
to that of Richards. I learned a
great deal during the next three years.
We all
know that comment with the benefit of hindsight is easy but, nevertheless, I
will indulge myself. I now think
that the merger of Richards and Johnson did not benefit the British tile
industry because it considerably reduced competition within the UK.
Each company had its strengths, weaknesses and sacred cows.
In my opinion, the two separate companies would have made more gains
than the one merged company. Some
of the previous takeovers by each group were of no benefit except, perhaps, to
provide extra temporary production capacity.
It would have been much better to provide new capacity by the latest
technology then available.
I had begun
to realise that the part of my work I enjoyed most, was the planning and
commissioning of new units or complete plants, especially when foreign travel
was involved. However, there was
one area of provision of complete supply for a tile factory in which I had only
limited experience. It was the
manufacture of glazes and opacifiers. An
opacifier does, as the name implies, make opaque a glaze which would otherwise
be transparent. Until the 1950’s
this was achieved by the use of tin oxide (usually from what was then Malaya)
but this was replaced by zirconium silicate which is more effective and cheaper.
Zirconium silicate (usually called zircon) is effective only when very
finely ground. It is a very hard
mineral and special grinding techniques are necessary to micro-fine it.
Only a handful of companies around the world were processing zirconium
silicate although it constituted about eight per cent by weight of tile glazes.
Zircon processing was a fairly closed shop.
Denis Fahey
was, at that time, the Chairman and Managing Director of William Boulton, which
had grown to become the main ceramic equipment supplier in the UK.
Boulton was supplying the equipment for the grinding of zircon to a small
North Staffs company. Denis knew of
my wish to gain experience in glaze and zircon processing and suggested I should
join that company. I did so, and
spent some years in an environment completely different to any in which I had
previously operated.
previous: summary
of 1960/67
next: 1971-78, Podmore and Sons