The rise and fall of Weyburn- from 1970 to 1999

part 3
During the 1970s, the company ventured outside the UK by acquiring camshaft companies in USA, Mexico and Germany.   The workforce grew from 450 in 1939 to over 800 during WW2, many of whom were women. In the period after the war up to 1973, there were between 600- 700. This figure gradually dropped to 200 with the introduction of automatic machines. A significant event in 1977 was the sale of the company by the then owners, Royston & Buckner, to Carborundum.  It was significant because the ownership of the company passed from Weyburn to a multi national conglomerate. Weyburn were now a small cog in a big wheel. Major decisions about the future were now made thousands of miles away.  Weyburn’s ownership changed again in 1982 to JPI and 1990 to T&N, but the new owners continued to invest heavily in new technology.  By the mid 1990s, Weyburn Elstead were producing over 800,000 camshafts pa, 300,000 of which were for Volvo Car on a fully automated line in the new shop 7 using state of the art machine tools and robots.  Weyburn had also secured a contract to supply Rover with 250,000 shafts per year and by the end of the century, won an order from BMW to supply 4, 8 and 12 cylinder eccentric shafts for their new generation of engines.

part 4 to follow