L. G. Harris & Co Ltd is a British manufacturer of paint brushes and decorating products founded in a workshop in Birmingham in 1928. It is the largest manufacturer of decorating paint brushes and painting products in the UK.
It was founded in 1928 as the Midland Trading Company. [1] The current company was incorporated in 1930, according to Open Corporates, incorporation date and renamed LG Harris in 1932. The business moved to Stoke Prior, near Bromsgrove in Worcestershire in 1936. [1] The family-run firm was acquired by Norwegian consumer products group Orkla Group in May 2016. [2]
Their brushes are primarily for the building trade and DIY markets. It is the largest brush manufacturer in the UK.
After completion of new buildings on Hanbury Road in 1959, and new warehousing in 1974 the company was operating from a 220,000 sq ft works, and in the 1980s owned over 2000 acres of woodland within a 20-mile radius as a source of the hardwood for the handles of its brushes. [3] The company expanded abroad investing in a Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprise in China.
The founder, Leslie George Harris, ran his business on Quaker principles, and was a major sponsor of arts and music during the 1960s. [4] [5]
In 1961, the company was awarded the Royal Warrant by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, for supply of its pig-bristle brushes and decorating tools to the Royal Sandringham Estate. [1] [6]
The company won the West Midlands Export Business of the Year in 2015. [7]
LG Harris owned a number of plantations such as Little Goosehill Wood in Worcestershire [8] which it intended to use to produce handles, but sold these off in the 1980s.
Worcestershire is a ceremonial county in the West Midlands of England. It is bordered by Shropshire, Staffordshire, and the West Midlands county to the north, Warwickshire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south, and Herefordshire to the west. The city of Worcester is the largest settlement and the county town.
West Midlands is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the larger West Midlands region of England. A landlocked county, it is bordered by Staffordshire to the north and west, Worcestershire to the south, and is almost surrounded by Warwickshire to the east. The largest settlement is the city of Birmingham.
The Midlands is the central part of England, bordered by Wales, Northern England, Southern England and the North Sea. The Midlands correspond broadly to the early-medieval kingdom of Mercia, and later became important in the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. They are now split into two official regions, the West Midlands and East Midlands. The Midlands' biggest city, Birmingham, is the second-largest in the United Kingdom. Other important cities include Coventry, Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Stoke-on-Trent, Wolverhampton, and Worcester.
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Bromsgrove is a local government district in north-east Worcestershire, England. It is named after its only town, Bromsgrove, where its council is based, but also includes several villages and surrounding rural areas. It borders the built-up area of Birmingham to the north. Other places in the district include Alvechurch, Aston Fields, Belbroughton, Catshill, Clent, Hagley, Rubery, Stoke Prior and Wythall. The population at the 2021 census was 99,475.
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