Industry
The town is, or has at one time, been the home to various industries including B/E Aerospace (Aircraft Interiors), Polyformes, Lipton Tea which has now closed down, Gossard clothing, Lancer Boss (forklifts, etc.).
The town has a sizeable sand quarrying industry.
The first and only TXE1 telephone exchange was developed by the General Post Office and went into service in 1968. To meet the growing demand it was added to by two TXE2 exchanges and a TXE6 exchange on the night of 18 August 1971. A third TXE2 was added latter but everything was all replaced by a TXE4 exchange around 1977, some of the TXE2 equipment was used to provide a new TXE2 at West Mersea Island in Essex. The large building, built on the site of the former Lake House, that housed all these TXE exchanges and the current digital exchange can be found in Lake Street.
Countrywide and Connells/Sequence, the UK's two largest estate agents' chains, both have their head offices in the town, as does the UK branch of Tupperware.
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Famous quotes containing the word industry:
“What more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more … a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from labor the bread it has earned.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“The reason American cars don’t sell anymore is that they have forgotten how to design the American Dream. What does it matter if you buy a car today or six months from now, because cars are not beautiful. That’s why the American auto industry is in trouble: no design, no desire.”
—Karl Lagerfeld (b. 1938)