Company history........World War 2........tyres, rubber components for tanks and trucks.
1947 -
These Price ‘P’and ‘PD’ (Price double)rubber mounts, now NATO items, are still sold today to shipyards,repairers and operators around the world.
1950s saw us making rubber parts for the Brabazon aeroplane and Inflatable aircraft lifting bags. Used when a plane’s undercarriage had collapsed.
1980s. we were the original maker and approved manufacturer of 6 types of acoustic
& anechoic rubber tiles and fairings for submarines and ships.
Some 200+ different types of rubber parts have also been produced for the MOD.
For over 50 years, A main Original Equipment Manufacturer to the Car industry and Engine builders. However,most of large volume business has been lost to major rubber companies or cheap imports.
Our 87 years experience and size means we are well suited
for the smaller niche businesses and markets.
We produce replacement rubber parts for cars, trucks, Buses, Coaches,Trailers etc
PRICE of BATH balls.
Although all other ball manufacturers in the western world have disappeared
or buy from the far east, we determined to continue with ball making in Britain.
.
In our hay day we were making over 75000 tennis balls,
15000 squash balls and 10000 golf balls a week,
but with far east labour costs around 5 -
it was obvious the volume ball production would not continue,
So we had to find other ways to stay in the ball business.
Developing a new type of golf ball,’Price’s Everlasting’
‘what a good idea’ and joined in,
Sales of our special golf balls built up to around 10000 a week, but
lost to the far east because of UK costs and lack of big business distribution.
We also produced a set of unique golf ‘Putting’ improver balls
with a ‘tread’ and selling like hot cakes, but regrettably our main customer/
distributor thought he had discovered a gold mine, overspent,and went broke.
We have the balls on the website, hopefully they will become popular again.
Squash balls.Making for all the Sports Brands, 42 of them !sales built up
to around 15000 balls a week before they too were lost to the far east.
Shortly afterwards the game lost popularity and declined dramatically.
Then we developed new balls for ‘minitennis’ for the Lawn Tennis Association
Also is suffering slow death by cheap imported balls.
A new larger tennis ball, the MAGNUM,
developed for the International Tennis Federation showed great promise.
However a big International Brand, using far east balls,stupidly flooded the market too quickly
killing off any chance of the new ball succeeding with distributors.
We developed a set of 3 balls for ‘minisquash’ for the SRA/ESRA.
these too have mostly been‘stolen’ by importers using cheap far east balls.
Balls for UK‘Racketball ‘were developed by us for the RBA /SRA/ESRA,
but currently the developing ball market for Racketball is under attack, by the importing
Brands We are fighting to retain a fair share. Time will tell !!
We continue to make the various types and other balls in development
but it all takes time.
With the loss of volume business we have become a smaller company,but with the
third generation of the Price family joining in we are optimistic about the future,