Magnadata Group, also known as Magnadata International, was a printing company based in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

in Lincolnshire, specialising in the development and manufacture of security and access control media including magnetic smart tickets and tags. It was placed into administration in 2015, and was subsequently sold to Paragon Group.

History

Norprint

Norcros was founded on 29 May 1956. The name Norcros came from Normanby, North Lincolnshire, home of

Normanby Hall Normanby Hall is a classic English mansion, located near the village of Burton-upon-Stather, north of Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire. History The present hall was built in 1825–30 to the designs of Robert Smirke for Sir Robert Sheffie ...

. A Director of the company was John Vincent Sheffield, former

High Sheriff of Lincolnshire This is a list of High Sheriffs of Lincolnshire. The High Sheriff is the oldest secular office under the Crown. Formerly the High Sheriff was the principal law enforcement officer in the county but over the centuries most of the responsibilit ...

from 1944-5, and great-uncle of the wife of David Cameron. Other members of the Sheffield family—Edmund and George—were directors. Norprint International was based on Norfolk Street in Boston. It had a division on Valley Road in

Dovercourt Dovercourt is a small seaside town and former civil parish, now in the parish of Harwich, in the Tendring district, in the county of Essex, England. It is older than its smaller but better-known neighbour, the port of Harwich, and appears in ...

on the Essex coast with 550 staff. Norprint also made ticket printing machines. Norprint claimed to be Europe's largest producer of industrial and retail labelling systems, and the largest in the world outside of America. In early 1968 it helped to start the ''

I'm Backing Britain ''I'm Backing Britain'' was a brief patriotic campaign, which flourished in early 1968 and was aimed at boosting the British economy. The campaign started spontaneously when five Surbiton secretaries volunteered to work an extra half-hour each d ...

'' campaign, by running off the promotional stickers for free. Before the days of barcodes in supermarkets, Norprint made hand-held price labellers, used by the main supermarkets; these were made in Harwich. In April 1989 it received a

Queen's Award for Technological Achievement Queens is a borough of New York City. Queens or Queen's may also refer to: Arts and entertainment * Queens (group), a Polish musical group * "Queens" (Saara Aalto song), 2018 * ''Queens'' (novel), by Stephen Pickles, 1984 * "Queens", a song by C ...

for its magnetic striped and encoded tickets and payment tokens. Norprint produced tickets for airlines and the

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The ...

. It was owned by Norcros plc. On 25 June 1998 Norcros put Norprint up for sale. In July 1998 Norprint was bought by a management buyout (MBO) for £7.9 million. After the buyout it was known as Norprint Labelling Systems. In 2005 it developed the ''Nortag'', a small inconspicuous RFID label on products to combat shoplifting, which won The Queen's Award for Enterprise: Innovation (Technology) in April 2005. It is known as

electronic article surveillance Electronic article surveillance is a technological method for preventing shoplifting from retail stores, pilferage of books from libraries or removal of properties from office buildings. Special tags are fixed to merchandise; these tags are remove ...

(EAS). The Nortag took seven years to develop.

Magnadata

In February 2006 Magnadata, also based in Boston, bought Norprint from administration. At the time Norprint had 226 staff and Magnadata had 193. Magnadata's customers included the London Underground, New York Metro, Sydney Rail Authority, Royal Mail, TNT, Manchester City Football Club, and the Ryder Cup organisation.

UK train tickets

In August 2010 it was awarded a £24 million contract to produce 750 million magnetic strip train tickets a year in the UK for the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC).

Administration

In 2015 Magnadata was placed into administration and was acquired by Paragon Group, becoming part of its BemroseBooth Paragon subsidiary. Norprint, which was a subsidiary of Magnadata, was not acquired by Paragon Group and was closed.

Location

The company was based in the north of Boston on the B1183. In 2021, planning permission was given to build forty-seven houses on its former site by local housing association Longhurst Group.

References

{{reflist

External links

BemroseBooth Paragon
Companies based in Lincolnshire Boston, Lincolnshire Fare collection systems in the United Kingdom Technology companies of the United Kingdom Radio-frequency identification companies Printing companies of the United Kingdom Smart cards Automatic identification and data capture