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Hygena
Hygena is a dormant brand of fitted kitchen and furniture in the United Kingdom. Started in Liverpool in 1925 to make Hoosier cabinets, it was bought by new investors in 1938, who after the war built modular kitchens for the new British post-war temporary prefab houses. With the introduction of design concepts based on the Frankfurt kitchen and new materials such as formica, Hygena became the dominant brand in kitchens from the 1960s through the 1970s. But mass manufacture and a change in styles meant that it ended up as an economy brand in the UK, bought out in the 1987 by the MFI Group. MFI sold the mainland European rights to the brand to Nobia in 2006, who on MFI's bankruptcy two years later also bought the global brand rights. However, the UK and Irish rights were bought by the Home Retail Group in 2009. Nobia sold the international rights to the brand to Groupe Fournier in 2015, who replaced it with its own SoCoo'c brand over the next 18 months. In 2016, the Home Reta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MFI Group
MFI Group Limited was a British furniture retailer, operating under the MFI brand. The company was one of the largest suppliers of kitchens and bedroom furniture in the United Kingdom, and operated mainly in retail parks in out of town locations. Anecdotally, it was said at one stage that one in three Sunday lunches in the United Kingdom were cooked in a kitchen from MFI, and 60% of British children were conceived in a bedroom from MFI. After success in its early decades, it experienced recurring financial problems accompanied by several changes of ownership, and on 26 November 2008, it was announced that the business had been placed into administration. Merchant Equity Partners, headed by Henry Jackson, was the last company to own it, before it was sold to the management in September 2008 for a "small profit". The business ceased trading by 19 December 2008, after the administrators failed to find a buyer. It struggled to make profits during the 2000s, as chains such as B&Q ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malcolm Healey
Malcolm Stanley Healey (born June 1944) is a British entrepreneur. Career Healey began his career in his family's paint company. In 1982 MFI Group and Healey's company, Humber Kitchens,The Independent (1999)Corporate Profile: MFI - Step one: pick up the pieces The Independent, 22 December 1999. bought Hygena a kitchen and furniture retail company, from Norcros who were looking to dissolve the company and sell the Hygena name. MFI took full control of Hygena in 1987, buying Healey out for £200 million. In 2009, he founded Wren Living, now known as Wren Kitchens, a kitchen manufacturing and retail company which as of the beginning of 2019 had 82 showrooms across the UK, with an annual turnover in 2018 of £490 million. As of 2020, Healey's West Retail Group also owned the online electronics retailer Ebuyer. In 2019, Healey donated £250,000 to the Conservative Party two weeks after its leader Boris Johnson became Prime Minister. He has donated £2,210,000 to the Conservative ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Home Retail Group
Home Retail Group plc was a home and general merchandise retailer based in the United Kingdom. It was the parent company of Argos and Habitat, and once owned the do it yourself chain Homebase before selling it to the Australian retailer Wesfarmers in February 2016. Home Retail Group was listed on the London Stock Exchange, until it was acquired by the British supermarket company Sainsbury's for £1.4 billion on 2 September 2016. History GUS plc acquired Argos in April 1998, and combined it with its mail order business to form Argos Retail Group (ARG) in June 2000. It went on to acquire Homebase for £900 million in November 2002, bringing it into ARG. In June 2005, GUS bought thirty three stores of Index, which were subsequently converted to the format of Argos. ARG was renamed Home Retail Group, upon its demerger in July 2006 from GUS. Shares in Home Retail Group were traded on the London Stock Exchange as from 11 October 2006. In October 2007, Home Retail Group bought t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Post-war Temporary Prefab Houses
Prefabs (prefabricated homes) were a major part of the delivery plan to address the United Kingdom's post–Second World War housing shortage. They were envisaged by war-time prime minister Winston Churchill in March 1944, and legally outlined in the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act 1944. Taking the details of the public housing plan from the output of the Burt Committee formed in 1942, the wartime coalition government under Churchill proposed to address the need for an anticipated 200,000 shortfall in post-war housing stock, by building 500,000 prefabricated houses, with a planned life of up to 10 years, within five years of the end of the Second World War. The Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act 1944 aimed to deliver 300,000 units within 10 years, within a budget of £150 million. Through use of the wartime production facilities and creation of common standards developed by the Ministry of Works, the programme got off to a good start and, of 1.2 million new houses bui ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Standard
British Standards (BS) are the standards produced by the BSI Group which is incorporated under a royal charter and which is formally designated as the national standards body (NSB) for the UK. The BSI Group produces British Standards under the authority of the charter, which lays down as one of the BSI's objectives to: Formally, as stated in a 2002 memorandum of understanding between the BSI and the United Kingdom Government, British Standards are defined as: Products and services which BSI certifies as having met the requirements of specific standards within designated schemes are awarded the Kitemark. History BSI Group began in 1901 as the ''Engineering Standards Committee'', led by James Mansergh, to standardize the number and type of steel sections, in order to make British manufacturers more efficient and competitive. Over time the standards developed to cover many aspects of tangible engineering, and then engineering methodologies including quality systems, safet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connected to an antenna which radiates the waves, and received by another antenna connected to a radio receiver. Radio is very widely used in modern technology, in radio communication, radar, radio navigation, remote control, remote sensing, and other applications. In radio communication, used in radio and television broadcasting, cell phones, two-way radios, wireless networking, and satellite communication, among numerous other uses, radio waves are used to carry information across space from a transmitter to a receiver, by modulating the radio signal (impressing an information signal on the radio wave by varying some aspect of the wave) in the transmitter. In radar, used to locate and track objects like aircraft, sh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bakelite
Polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride, better known as Bakelite ( ), is a thermosetting phenol formaldehyde resin, formed from a condensation reaction of phenol with formaldehyde. The first plastic made from synthetic components, it was developed by Leo Baekeland in Yonkers, New York in 1907, and patented on December 7, 1909 (). Because of its electrical nonconductivity and heat-resistant properties, it became a great commercial success. It was used in electrical insulators, radio and telephone casings, and such diverse products as kitchenware, jewelry, pipe stems, children's toys, and firearms. The "retro" appeal of old Bakelite products has made them collectible. The creation of a synthetic plastic was revolutionary for the chemical industry, which at the time made most of its income from cloth dyes and explosives. Bakelite's commercial success inspired the industry to develop other synthetic plastics. In recognition of its significance as the world's first commercial syntheti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Formica (plastic)
Formica Laminate is a laminated composite material invented at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in the United States in 1912. Originally used to replace mica in electrical applications, it has since been manufactured for multiple applications. It has been produced by Formica Group manufacturing sites across the globe since. Formica Group are best known for the company's classic product: a heat-resistant, wipe-clean laminate of paper or textile with melamine resin. Formica Group, a division of the Dutch company Broadview Holdings, consists of Formica Canada, Inc., Formica Corporation, Formica de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Formica IKI Oy, Formica Limited, Formica S.A., Formica S.A.S., Formica Taiwan Corporation, Formica (Thailand) Co., Ltd., Formica (Asia) Ltd., and others. Etymology The mineral mica was commonly used at that time for electrical insulation. Because the new product acted as a substitute "for mica", Faber used the name ''Formica'' as a trademark. The word ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine United States Minor Outlying Islands, Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in Compact of Free Association, free association with three Oceania, Pacific Island Sovereign state, sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Palau, Republic of Palau. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders Canada–United States border, with Canada to its north and Mexico–United States border, with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ministry Of Works (United Kingdom)
The Ministry of Works was a department of the UK Government formed in 1940, during the Second World War, to organise the requisitioning of property for wartime use. After the war, the ministry retained responsibility for government building projects. In 1962 it was renamed the Ministry of Public Building and Works, and acquired the extra responsibility of monitoring the building industry as well as taking over the works departments from the War Office, Air Ministry and Admiralty. The chief architect of the ministry from 1951 to 1970 was Eric Bedford. In 1970 the ministry was absorbed into the Department of the Environment (DoE), although from 1972 most former works functions were transferred to the largely autonomous Property Services Agency (PSA). Subsequent reorganisation of PSA into Property Holdings was followed by abolition in 1996 when individual government departments took on responsibility for managing their own estate portfolios. History The tradition of building specifi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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