Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Celebrating 100 Years – Bayliss, Ormerod & Co.Ltd

The business was started in February 1912 by Herbert John Bayliss, in partnership with Mr. Ormerod, at 18 Constitution Hill, Birmingham, next door to the Public Library.

Within six months Mr. Ormerod had decided that manufacturing packaging was not his chosen career and Herbert Bayliss bought him out, keeping the name as Bayliss, Ormerod as the business was now beginning to be well known by this name.

To start with, the deliveries were made by a man with a large wheelbarrow, then by a boy on a bicycle, and eventually with the increase of customers a van was bought, and Herbert began to feel that he had ‘arrived’ on the manufacturing scene in Birmingham.

The advent of the First World War saw Herbert joining up and attaining the rank of Captain in the 1st Warwickshire Battalion. Meanwhile the business was being run by his mother Mary Bayliss, and sister Lilian Bayliss (an unusual situation in those days for women to run a business), but as it turned out a most successful combination.

Herbert Bayliss returned after the War to continue to build up the business, which, after several years, having outgrown the factory in Constitution Hill, was moved to a building by the railway bridge in Icknield Street.

The Second World War intervened, and between keeping the factory still functioning with a depleted number of employees due to the call-up for war service, Herbert Bayliss himself doing war work as the Civil Defence Officer for the Birmingham North area which entailed being up most of the night visiting Civil Defence posts, and ‘incidents’ caused by the bombing, and then working all day in the business, he managed to keep it going.

After the war, Herbert saw the need to add further diversity to the, by then, Limited Company, and imported machines to make transparent boxes, lids, and cartons, thus adding another large department. His two sons, Gordon and Stanley Bayliss, who had been in the RAF during the war, joined the Company at this point and it continued to thrive.

Herbert Bayliss died in 1960. The company soon needed larger premises yet again and moved to its current buildings at 37-38 Icknield Street. Herbert’s daughter, Barbara, joined the Company ‘to help out’ and is now the Managing Director and her son, Edward, having qualified as second in the country with a City and Guilds in Packaging, joined the business and started the foil blocking department. Various members of the 4th generation of the family work in the Company during university vacations.

The Company prides itself on being a caring, efficient and ‘green’ family business, going the extra mile for its customers, and appreciating the loyalty and hard work of employees, some of whom have been second generation employees with Bayliss, Ormerod, themselves.

The four Directors, David Cookson, Barbara Davis, Marc Groves and Melanie Pearson, look forward to the future and the next ‘100’.

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