1879 - How it all started
Hans Renold, son of a burgher family in Aarau, Switzerland, knew from boyhood exactly what he wanted to be - a mechanical engineer. In 1873, at the age of 21, he decided to come to England and found work in Manchester with a firm of machinery exporters. His independent and inventive spirit soon found expression in the purchase, in 1879, of a small textile-chain making business in Salford.
Here, in a back street in Salford, began the enterprise of which The Institution of Mechanical Engineers was to say in a memoir: "Few realise how extensive is the influence of Renold's inventiveness on both civil and industrial life throughout the world.
1880 - The bush roller chain is invented and an industry is born
Hans Renold's invention of the bush roller chain in 1880 laid the foundation of the precision chain industry. The new concept of the bush roller chain was to transform the potentialities of the chain industry. In 1895, he designed and patented inverted tooth chain.
Renold still maintains the essential character stamped on it by its founder. Apart from his brilliance as a creative engineer, Hans Renold lived and prospered by a few basic rules. First was his insistence on high technical quality and a veneration and enthusiasm for craftsmanship; for him there was no second best, "...refuse to make other than the best, have no second grade..."
An international outlook
Hans Renold's vision was not restricted to the prospects in UK industry. By 1915 he had already established selling arrangements in nine overseas countries. Sales subsidiaries were formed in Canada in 1920 and in the USA in 1921. These were followed by others aimed at developing the French, Belgian and Dutch markets and in 1928 a selling operation was set up in Germany.
The first acquisition of a major competitor came in 1925, when Brampton Brothers Limited, with its French manufacturing subsidiary at Calais, was purchased and the operation merged with the manufacturing facility previously established in Coventry.
In 1947 Renold established its first green-field manufacturing operation overseas in Melbourne, Australia and this was followed by the establishment of other owned sales and sometimes manufacturing operations in Austria, Denmark, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden and Switzerland.
In 1963 Renold acquired Arnold and Stolzenberg GmbH of Einbeck, one of the largest and oldest-established chain manufacturers in Germany.
A significant strategic development of the Renold Group was the acquisition of John Holroyd and Co Ltd in 1964, and this marked the start of the transition from purely chain manufacture to manufacture and supply of a complete range of power transmission products and precision machine tools. Further acquisitions brought more gearing, couplings, clutches, brakes, variable speed drives and various hydraulic products into the Group.
In 1967 the Queen's Award was conferred on Renold and Holroyd - upon the former for export performance and the latter for technological innovation. A further Queen's Award for Technology was awarded to Holroyd in 1992.
In December 1998 Renold acquired Jones & Shipman plc in the UK and with it a range of precision production and tool room grinding machine tools, "superabrasive" machine tools from Edgetek in the USA and electronic control systems from Goodwin in the UK.
Today, Renold employs nearly 3000 people in 22 countries around the world.
