Economy
Leatherhead formerly had a number of light manufacturing businesses, such as the Ronson's lighter factory, but in and around the 1980s many closed or moved on. Recent years have seen the emergence of several industrial parks, and the town has attracted many service and headquarters operations, including well known companies.
The town has long been home to a cluster of research centres and research-focused businesses. ERA Technology Ltd is an engineering consultancy that has been in Leatherhead since the 1920s. Nearby is Leatherhead Food Research. The same area of west Leatherhead was home to the Central Electricity Research Laboratory (CERL), the main research lab for the CEGB until its dissolution in 2001.
A recently established local business cluster is that of racing cars. Lister Cars, makers of Lister Storm, Le Mans racing cars, are based in the town, and in nearby Dorking, while P1 International was founded here in 2000 by ex-Formula One World Champion Damon Hill. Other businesses in this sector are based in nearby parts of Surrey.
The new headquarters of Police Federation of England and Wales is based in Leatherhead.
Read more about this topic: Leatherhead
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Everyone is always in favour of general economy and particular expenditure.”
—Anthony, Sir Eden (1897–1977)
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)