History

The company was founded in 1913 when four bottle manufacturers in the North Of England combined to form a public company under the name of The United Glass Bottle Manufacturers Ltd. The object of the merger was to raise sufficient capital to acquire rights in the first successful automatic bottle making machine which had been invented by Michael Owens, the founder of Owens-Illinois Inc, a leading United States manufacturer of glass containers. The four original companies were Cannington Shaw & Company, Nuttall Company (St Helens), Alfred Alexander & Co. and Robert Candlish & Son. During the following three decades the company closed a number of small plants and concentrated production at a newly built factory at Charlton and two factories at St Helens.

In 1937 the company acquired four bottle works from The Distillers Company Ltd in consideration for which the latter acquired 40 per cent of the ordinary shares and 50 per cent of the preference shares in the company with rights in the appointment of directors. From that time the company supplied about 90 per cent of Distiller's bottle requirements.

In 1955 the company acquired Alloa Glass Work Company Ltd with works at Alloa. Then, in 1962, United Glass acquired Key Glassworks Ltd which operated two glass works in South East England at Harlow and New Cross. Following an appraisal of the combined manufacturing facilities the United Glass factory at Charlton was progressively run down and finally closed in 1967.