Graepel Perforators Limited

Dates: Circa 1935 to the present day

Location: Burtonwood, previously based in Clegge Street Warrington

Specialities: Perforated metal sheets and woven wire mesh.

Graepels Perforators Limited is believed to be the last standing manufacturer of woven mesh in Warrington, and takes pride in their role of preserving the town’s 250 year legacy of wire weaving.

The Warrington arm of the company has its origins in the firm of Jones and Thomas Wireworkers of Warrington, which dates back to around 1935. This was one of the smaller wire works in the town, operating out of a small workshop in Clegge Street, and the company did not even become fully incorporated until 1944.

In 1971 Graepel Perforators & Weavers Limited took over Jones and Thomas Wireworkers although the company were still known under both names until at least the 1980s.

The new owners, Graepel Perforators & Weavers Limited, took their name from the founder Harald Graepel. Harald was from a long line of industrialists – his grandfather Hugo Graepel had founded a perforated metal company in Budapest in 1889 – and Harald had been looking for opportunities to expand the family business into the UK. In 1957 he had travelled to Ireland in order to sell grain driers to the agricultural industry, eventually founding an offshoot of the family company there in 1959

In 1983 Jones and Thomas Wireworkers – as part of the Graepel Perforators Ltd (UK) – moved to the new Industrial Estate at Phipps Lane, Burtonwood. The company, which then specialised in high tensile woven wire screening for the quarry industry, was the 21st to move to the estate, which was the former site of the Burtonwood Motor Engineering Company.

Jones and Thomas (Graepel Perforators Limited) in the 1980s

 

Today, Graepels continue to manufacture woven mesh in a multitude of aperture sizes and patterns and from a variety of materials such as high tensile steel, stainless steel and mild steel. They are able to customise their mesh products through changing the crimp patterns of the wire, in addition to including or omitting wires in both directions.

This article was written for the Wire Works Project 2020-2021, a National Lottery Heritage funded project aiming to highlight and celebrate the legacy left by the wire industry, which dominated Warrington’s employment structure for over 170 years, putting the town at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution.