A Yorkshire based textile dyeing mill, Harrison Gardner Dyers & Winders, has shut its doors after 125 years in business, and every member of its workforce has lost their job.
The mill, which survived through both World Wars, went into administration on September 24.
Founded in 1901 and run by the same family across four generations, it offered specialist commission dyeing to carpet makers and wool knitting businesses throughout UK and Europe.
Harrison Gardner had long been embedded in the Yorkshire textile supply chain, counting Newhey Carpets, Axminster weaver Carpets of Kidderminster and craft kit producer WM Briggs among its clients.
Julian Pitts and Richard Kenworthy of BTG have been installed as joint administrators, following a period in which rising running costs and weaker demand across the wool and wider textile sectors squeezed the company.
The administrators are now inviting bids for the firm’s assets. Although a break-up sale is expected, proposals for the business as a going concern will also be weighed.
“Regrettably, against a backdrop of ever tougher trading, with mounting energy, labour, raw material and other overheads bearing down on the business, the directors had no option but to seek administration,” Julian Pitts said.
“After reviewing the position, and with no realistic way to keep the company running, closure was unavoidable,” he added.
“The recent collapse of yarn spinner West Yorkshire Spinners, a long-standing customer of Harrison Gardner and a leading name in British textiles, was a major factor in the company’s failure,” Pitts stated.
He continued: “We are offering specialist HR and redundancy assistance to Harrison Gardner’s former staff, so that they can reach every available resource and entitlement, and we will keep doing so through this difficult time.”
A Harrison Gardner spokesperson said: “After 125 years and four generations in family hands, this is an extraordinarily hard day for everybody connected with Harrison Gardner,” Yorkshire Live reported.
“We have worked relentlessly to steer through the increasingly difficult conditions facing textile makers in the UK and Europe. Yet rising costs and falling demand have built up pressures that the business was, in the end, unable to withstand,” he too added.
“It is especially painful that a company that weathered two World Wars, serious economic slumps and decades of upheaval in the textile trade should fall in its 125th year.”
