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One awkward customer led to Qualcast making lawnmowers for the whole world
When Qualcast Derby Foundry went into voluntary liquidation in 2006 it was the end of an era for thousands of current and former employees, who remember working for the firm with affection. Among them is the company’s former Chairman and MD Keith Johnson. Here, he recalls Qualcast’s golden days.
It was with great sadness that I heard the news that Qualcast Derby Foundry was to cease production of iron castings at its Victory Road site last year.
Although I have been retired for 10 years now, the company has always represented much more to me than the 45 years of working life I committed to it.
I believe Qualcast benefited from good beginnings. It started life as a family business and always kept a caring ethos, even when it eventually became a limited company.
It was basically a company with a good heart, which promoted a caring atmosphere towards all its employees and I think this showed itself in several ways.
On the one hand staff were provided with a good choice of social activities throughout the year, from Christmas parties through to sports days events and even beauty contests. These occasions were always popular.
Another significant way this caring attitude was displayed was through the firm’s respectful attitude towards every member of staff, not just those in key positions.
The philosophy of the firm, was that every task should be valued, from the most sophisticated and demanding jobs right down to more straight- forward roles. Chances are that if a director had to take a day off work he would not be hugely missed but if the toilet cleaner was absent everyone’s day would be affected.
Though Qualcast has been a big part of Derby’s industrial history for 100 years, employing around 2,000 people in its heyday, the business originated in the north, under the initiative of John Jobson, who became a partner of a Sheffield foundry in 1801.
Little else is known of its early history until 1854, when the firm decided to relocate in Derby, establishing an outlet at Litchurch Works. At that time Derby was a prime site. Its railway service was second to none and raw materials were close to hand. Its central situation was also ideal for communications throughout the UK.
In time, the foundry operation was relocated to Exeter Place, in Derby, and the company changed its name to Derwent Foundry, producing iron and steel castings, mainly for the railways and the stove and grate industries. The premises were situated directly on the banks of the River Derwent, which resulted, unfortunately, in an annual flooding of the whole works.
By 1928 the fourth generation of the Jobson family, Vincent Jobson, who was known to his staff as “VJ”, was managing the business with his father, Edgar Jobson. VJ was a notable man with a huge presence, in terms of his physicality and personality. In 1928 he moved the foundry to Victory Road, and re-named the company Qualcast, a combination of the phrase “quality castings”. It was a name which rapidly achieved a world-wide reputation. Bizarrely, the name also became inseparably linked with lawnmowers.
It was never part of the company’s plan to become a lawnmower manufacturer and the fact that it did is evidence of VJ’s eccentricity and determination to succeed in whatever he took on.
In the mid 1920s, the company was casting a small number of lawnmower parts for a customer who was rapidly becoming a nuisance, through always wanting the casting-design changed. Finally VJ told him: “Come here again with another change and I will double the price of your castings; come again after that and Qualcast will make the lawnmowers ourselves”.
The rest is history. Qualcast went on to become the largest manufacturer of lawnmowers in the world. Although Qualcast was best-known for lawn-mowers, that side of the company’s activities comprised only a small percentage of the overall business of the Qualcast Group.
In 1945, at the end of the war, VJ made the decision to reduce the manufacture of stoves and grates and decided that the future lay in the manufacture of precision iron castings for the automobile industry, which was then beginning to get into its stride.
Products for the refrigeration industry were another major production line. In 1945, Qualcast purchased, what was originally, the Clarke Aircraft factory, in Sunnyhill, from Braid Engineering and, in 1954, it transferred the whole of the lawnmower operation there.
I joined Qualcast in January 1952 as a time-and-motion study engineer, having just completed my National Service in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. By the time I retired, in 1997, I had experienced some of the most dramatic and incredible periods of change in the engineering industry.
Back in 1952, the company consisted of a foundry producing iron castings by conventional methods. It was a steel foundry producing a range of castings for Aga boilers and fire grates, and a unique die-cast foundry where iron castings were produced from an iron die.
The Qualcast die cast foundry was the largest of its type in the world, having been originally brought from America by VJ some years previously.
VJ was a big believer in rewarding hard-working employees whenever possible. To him, getting his people away from Victory Road for at least a short while was important. So every year a sports day was organised at Haslams Lane Sports Ground. Employees’ families were taken there on Qualcast lorries, many decorated as floats.
I was often the man on the microphone and one of my fondest memories is when I arranged a wrestling match, the stars being Les Kellett and Jackie Pallo.
In December we also held two Christmas parties at the King’s Hall, at which we were able to present the long-service wards for employees who had completed 20, 40 and 50 years’ service. Everyone attending the party received a crisp, 10-shilling note to be spent at the bar! Back in the workplace, In 1964 QDF installed the UK’s first fully automated moulding line. For the next four years, we struggled with enormous financial losses as we moved from managing a bow-and-arrow foundry operation, to full automation, with massive changes along the way.
Some production lines changed from 100 moulds a day to an unbelievable 400 an hour. It was not just the method of work that changed either. Automation also completely changed the pace and atmosphere at work.
In the 50s and 60s people still worked hard but the nature of the work meant that people communicated more with each other in the work place. As a result it was an environment where great characters were developed. This seemed to get lost somehow with automation and the drive for better and faster production. It was a sad loss for many workplaces. In 1969, Qualcast merged with Birmid and became the largest foundry group in Europe. VJ was now joint president of the group, along with Lord Burleigh, the Marquis of Exeter, who had famously won gold medals at the 1924 and 1928 Olympics.
Having risen to the position of works manager, I was appointed to the company’s management board in 1962 and was promoted to managing director in August, 1969.
QDF continued to expand and I oversaw a £14m development programme in the mid 70s, which included melting equipment, more auto mould lines and environmental improvements.
In later years, as many components for the automotive industry changed to aluminium materials, the iron foundry industry began to shrink.
QDF was taken over by the Blue Circle Group and then by the large German group, Thyssen. After a spell in the Birmid Group in Birmingham, I returned to Victory Road works in 1981, as chairman and MD, during the worst industrial recession for many years. We had to seek new sales order opportunities overseas in order to retain a business.
Sadly, during this time, Leys Malleable and Parker Foundry finally closed down, making some 4,000 Derby people redundant.
QDF was fortunate to survive the recession and it went on to become the largest foundry operation in the UK, boasting a reputation for excellent supply and first-class quality.
Throughout the 80s and 90s Qualcast supplied components for virtually every car built in Europe. I look back over my time at Qualcast with a great deal of satisfaction.
One of the schemes, which my management team and I introduced, that gave me immense pleasure, was that, when someone who had worked in the foundry reached the age of 63, they would be entitled to one day off per week, with pay, and at age 64, this increased to two days. This helped to prepare them for retirement.
The general welfare of the employees was always to the forefront. Employee benefits included a benevolent fund, with contributions from the management and employees, to provide additional sickness payments for all and a week’s holiday by the sea for the long-term sick and their families.
This was the reward for working long hours in a tough environment. My life very much centred around Qualcast; my employees and colleagues were my friends and everyone had great respect for each other.
The demise of the company, just a few years after my retirement, filled me with much sadness.
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