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QualityCressall Resistors quality system is certified by Lloyd's Register of Quality Assurance to ISO 9001.
Most of the technology that we use at Cressall was developed in the thirties and forties by the people at Cressall and other companies such as British Thomson Houston, Brookhurst Igranic, Expamet, Fawcett Preston, the Rheostatic Company and Walshe. Thanks to the achievements of those men and their successors Cressall remains the leading British company in its field almost seventy years later.
Corporate history can very easily become little more than lists like the one above, of now-forgotten people, places and products. We are lucky enough to have one or two documents that bring those past times alive: Bill Parkinson’s description of the wartime years; the catalogue photograph of an apprehensive young man standing on a service grid to demonstrate its unbreakability; and a letter from Geoff Bell in which he describes how in 1953 he was taken on ‘by old Mr. Cressall himself’ with a promise of a ‘seat on the board’ in due course. He notes that the managers ran good departments ‘in spite of, rather than because of, the Directors’. Once he had realised that the seat on the board was ‘confined to the hard wooden chair in the contracts department’, he moved on to another employer!
Early Days – 1912-1955
Mr. H. H. Cressall and his brother founded the Cressall Manufacturing Co. Ltd. in Birmingham in 1912 to produce asbestos woven resistance nets. Such nets were already being manufactured in Germany but not in the UK. We still have one of the original looms, which remained in use until 1999.
The company grew steadily and by 1939 had 70 employees in three-storey premises in Tower Street, including a metal fabrication department, and a range that included wound porcelain and mica elements as well as the original nets, used for motor speed control, battery chargers, heating and other applications.
During the war in 1939 the Company was a ‘reserved’ establishment, making welding resistors for dockyards, degaussing resistors for use on-board ship to combat mines, nets for radio communications and heaters for bomb and camera mechanisms on aircraft.
Given its location in central Birmingham, bombs were a nightly fact of life. Bill Parkinson, the contracts manager, later wrote that morale was raised by a visit from a naval officer who explained that the defence of Gibraltar was entirely dependent upon a piece of resistance wire that Cressall had supplied.
Growth was maintained by the addition to the range of ‘Torostats’ (wire-wound rotary variable rheostats) and vitreous enamel resistors and then in 1955 Cressall was taken over by The Expanded Metal Company (Expamet).
Postwar – 1955-1990
The use of expanded mesh for resistor elements was the subject of British patent 397932, taken out by Messrs. Nelson and Williams of Expamet in 1931. Considerable development effort had been put into testing and standardisation so that by 1945 the materials, dimensions and mounting of the strip and girder elements were exactly as we use today. The company’s sales of expanded mesh resistors grew from £15,130 in 1936 to £122,918 in 1944.
The two companies were natural partners. Cressall could manufacture resistors up to a rating of 100 Amps and Expamet had a resistor and heater section that could conveniently deal with requirements from 50 Amps upwards to any current.
Cressall were still operating with no full-time outside selling, but Expamet had two salesmen and regional offices throughout the country. They had been, and were still doing, significant business in resistors for welding, load testing, main starting, dynamic braking controls for winches, capstans, windlasses, battery discharging, etc. From its base in West Hartlepool the new company, which retained the Cressall name, had a wider range of resistors, heaters, etc. than any other in the U. K.
1957 was notable for three main reasons. Mr. Cressall died; the company introduced a variable toroidal transformer (the Torovolt) in competition with Claude Lyons and Berco, and were given five years’ notice to quit their premises by the Development Committee of Birmingham Corporation. The company, now with more than 100 employees, bought and moved in to new premises (previously owned and occupied by British Timken Company) less than two miles away in Cheston Road in Birmingham in 1960.
1965 saw the birth of a separate division selling low voltage road heating systems and magnetic screening for hospitals and laboratories, and diversifications into printed circuits and electronic devices. At the time, Bill Parkinson wrote that ‘the title of the company is being changed Cressall Printed Circuits and an agreement concluded with one of the leading American makers of PCBs to provide know-how so that we may become one of the leaders in this field. Our technical, administrative, production and selling organisations have been greatly strengthened over the past 12 months and Cressall now has approx. 400 employees’.
Halma Group – 1955-1990
This diversification did not prove to be a long-term success. The company was sold to Astra Engineering in 1971 and moved – still in Birmingham – to Queens Road in Aston; by the time it was bought by the Halma Group in 1990 turnover was less than £0.5m, there were fewer than 15 employees and the product range had slimmed down to the core of just expanded mesh, edge-wound coils and steel jacketed heaters.
The application of Halma’s rigorous financial and managerial disciplines revived Cressall’s fortunes during the 1990’s. In 1993 the company moved to its present premises in Evington in Leicester; these are well-equipped and have ample space for future growth.
New products – neutral earthing resistors, portable load banks, standard dynamic braking resistors – and a more market-led approach to sales meant that by 2000 the company was employing more than 100 people and had a turnover of more than £6m. Investments were made in a new expander, new edge-winding and wire-coiling machines and a complete sheet metal fabrication plant.
In the nineties three other UK resistor businesses and products were acquired, from GEC Rugby, HA Birch and Eaton Cutler-Hammer, extending Cressall’s range of resistor technologies to its present wide scope. In particular GEC’s oval edge-wound coils and Cutler-Hammer’s considerable expertise in the design of traction resistors have made Cressall the leading force in the power resistor business in the UK.
Telema – 2006 - 2009
Halma sold all of its resistor businesses to Telema SpA in 2006 – in Cressall’s case the sale was made to Telema’s existing UK subsidiary, TPR Resistors. The two companies have been merged under the Cressall name. Telema is the acknowledged world leader in power resistor design and technology and we all believe that the future for Cressall as the British part of this family-owned business is a bright one.
Cressall Resistors Ltd, Evington Valley Road, Leicester, LE5 5LZ U.K. Tel: (+44) (0)116 273 3633