Ashmores History

Ashmores Press Brake Tooling Ltd becoming 100 years old on 26th April 2019, here is a brief history of the company

We are a small family firm established in 1919 and the longest established manufacturer of press brake tooling in the UK.

The company was set up by Harold Ashmore and his wife Harriet to make bedstead fittings (mattresses etc.) then the foundry side of the business was developed for engineering castings.

The business was then taken over by James Weaver in 1930 and subsequently this led to the production of castings for the machine tool industry.

In 1950 Danny Weaver entered the business and became Managing Director in 1963. This led to the setting up of a machine shop to complement the existing thriving foundry business. Through its strong links with the machine tool trade Ashmores then set up to start manufacturing press brake tools on a subcontract basis for companies such as Bronx Engineering.

In 1983, Danny's son Guy Weaver entered the business and subsequently became Managing Director in 2000. The severe economic down turn in the early 1980's led to a much needed further diversification. The company now started to market the press brake tools to companies direct rather than on a sub-contract basis.

Now here we are 100 years later. The company is still flourishing, manufacturing their tools for a great range of industries from the computer industry to light fittings, supermarket shelving, shipping containers, motorway barriers to just recently a new set of tools for M-Sport - the Ford Rally team from which they will manufacture many specialist parts for their World Rally campaign.

More recent additions are the full range of Euro-Spec tools which are now common place on many machines, this is now complemented with additional range of Hi Tech tools. Tools can also be modified in terms of radius, nose angle or an extra modification to allow the tools to bend your products.

The quality of the product is superb, allowing us to provide the perfect solution to fit in line with clients' budget again and again. Together with guillotine blades both new and re-ground, we truly believe we have the ability to serve the metal forming industry for many more years to come.