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WESTERN TYDENS Western Tydens factory is located in a historic industrial building, just inside the Dartmoor national park and butting up against the main railway line to Plymouth and Cornwall, in the beautiful South Hams corner of south Devon. The building was originally built as a vast china clay settling tank, and is constructed from huge hand dressed granite blocks, with walls up to 5 meters thick. Modernised to a high standard in 2002 on the edge of Western Beacon, it is an enviable place for a company, except when the NE winter weather drop down off the high Dartmoor peaks! During the late 1800s China Clay was extracted from Dartmoor, at Redlake near the market town of Ivybridge about 10 miles north east of Plymouth. A historic crossing point of the river Erme and on the Great Western Railway line to Cornwall. At that time the demand for China clay, by the paper industry was so great that a large new processing works was established by the Devon China Clay Corporation, known as the Cantrell Works. The works consisting of a series of huge granite settling tacks, made from stone quarried behind the site on Dartmoor, where the wet clay which was brought down from the moors, was left to drain, The clay was then dried in a series of covered sheds, with a labyrinth of heated pipes running under them, drawing hot air under the buildings, before venting up the still existing landmark 30m tall granite built chimney stack. The dry clay was then loaded directly onto railway wagons in a siding beside the works and next to the main line. The Cantrell works were never profitable, and closed in the 1930’s. After the war, with the rapid advancement in agriculture, and the move from animal power to tractor power, the old Cantrell works was acquired by a local entrepreneur who established an agricultural machinery business on the site, this became Western Machinery. The business boomed, and the old settling tanks were roofed over to create workshops and stores and the drying sheds were converted to offices. The company flourished and started supplying tractors and machinery and soon became a national business. By the 1970’s the company had become an established main agent for many European brands of machinery, such as JF, Stoll and Rabe, assembling and storing machinery in the old clay works. During the 1980s the expansion continued, and the company became better known as Westmac, and was acquired by the Dutton Foreshaw group.
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By the 1990s the agriculture market was changing as smaller farms were being incorporated into larger concerns and farming equipment became bigger and more complex, a new company Landmech was established alongside Westmac to cater for more modern high-tech brands such as Pottinger from Austria. By the early 2000’s the agricultural market was in further decline, fewer but more expensive machines were being sold, and Dutton Foreshaw decided to divest its- self of the business. A management buy-out was organised, and the company was renamed Land Machinery, unfortunately trading conditions did not improve and a controlled shrinkage of the business began, with many of the franchises given up and the estate its self was sold, and in 2013 the agricultural business was finally closed. After the sale of the industrial estate, Land Machinery reduced its space requirements, and the old clay pits were divided up into smaller units and rented out for other purposes, and much of the old drying sheds was converted into small artists workspaces to take advantage of the beautiful landscape in which it is located, and much of the site is now being run as a community arts and crafts organisation. In the early 1960’s and 70’s with the evergrowing use of tractors in agriculture, there was a growing number of fires on farms, and it was established that the early diesel engines of the time emitted a lot of sparks, a well know problem with diesel engines due to the relatively poor combustion process. A simple solution was the fitting of a spark arrester to the exhaust. Western Machinery, as suppliers to the agricultural industry found a supplier of a very effective design in southern Sweden. Tydens AB. Tydens had a small factory in Malmo and had been producing a centrifugal design of spark arrester for some of the large Swedish groups such as Volvo and Saab. The design had been tested and approved by the Swedish ministry of Explosives for use in all sorts of environments such as mines, airports, forestry and agriculture; Western Machinery started importing the product, initially for its agricultural business but gradually other industries started to see the advantages of spark arresters and the Tydens brand became sought after for it’s efficiency and Western Machinery became the major
customer for Tydens. Unfortunately, in the early 80’s Mr Tydens passed away, and the family no longer able to run the business, which was sold to Western Machinery. An engineer was sent from the UK to Sweden, and the machinery, tooling and know how was transferred over to the UK and a small factory was set up in one of the old Clay works units. A new division was created within Western Machinery; Western Tydens. Whilst still part of Western Machinery, Western Tydens quietly grew and entered new markets, such as mining, the fast-developing oil and gas industry, materials handling and the military, whilst the traditional agricultural market declined. New products were added to its manufactured range, including flame arresters, based on a unique ball bearing design, and a relationship was forged with another Swedish company, Unikat AB (later to become Engine Control Systems ECS) who were pioneering catalytic converters and other exhauster purification technologies. Various accreditations were achieved during this time, including approval by the British MOD (Mil C), OCMA and the original quality system BS5750. Although only a small division of Western Machinery, Western Tydens continued to grow throughout the 90’s, forging distributor relationships with companies such as Pyroban and Chalwyn, both leaders in the field of engine protection for hazardous area, other customers of the time were British equipment manufacturers such as Massey Ferguson, Compair and Hyster, by this time the companies manufacturing skills and the quality of its products was well established. By the turn of the century, many changes were occurring in UK manufacturing, resulting in the loss of many of the company’s customers, the shutting down of the mines and declines in manufacturing, and Western Tydens tried to expand by taking on the sole off road exhaust cleaning business from ECS for Unikat Diesel Particulate Filters, but without much success. The spark arrester business remained steady but with a declining market, however, in 2000 a new European Standard (EN1843) was introduced for the use of equipment in hazardous areas, ATEX, this standard defined very specific requirements for the quality and testing standards that spark arresters had to meet and where they should be used, the company’s products were submitted for testing and subsequently approved, new management systems were introduced, including the adoption of ISO9000, enabling the products to be sold as meeting this new standard.
