W.T. Atkin and BHP were both long established UK companies providing engineering and industrial automation solutions to a wide variety of international industries. They were owned by Robert Hyde & Son (Holdings) Limited for a number of years, but in early 2004 a change of policy by the parent company meant that these two subsidiaries were no longer compatible with its investment portfolio. The senior management team of both the companies believed passionately in their high quality British manufactured products and, with the support of international bankers HSBC, Atkin Automation was formed to acquire the assets and intellectual property rights of both W.T. Atkin and BHP. Today Atkin Automation is a profitable British manufacturer of production lines for industries which need to process metal strip as part of their volume production operations. The company is entirely owned by its employees, and its ethos is to provide innovative high quality products and turnkey automation solutions on time and within budget. Since the recent expansion of the EU, Atkin Automation has worked with a growing number of companies which are establishing production facilities in Eastern Europe, building machines and production lines at its UK manufacturing facility, shipping them to site and providing a complete local installation and commissioning service. Atkin Automation is proud to be maintaining the heritage of British engineering on a truly international basis into the twenty first century.