Dates

• Existence: Established 1845
• Usage: c1900 - 2022

Biography

Mather & Platt is an engineering company founded in Newton Heath, Manchester, England in 1845. The company still continued trading today as a food processing and packaging business, under the name M&P Engineering in Trafford Park, Manchester.

The story of the company started in 1817 when Peter Mather established a company to make machines to produce textiles. In 1836 William Mather and his brother Colin started William & Colin Mather, a small engineering company providing rollers and equipment to the local textile bleaching industry. This business was eventually taken over by William’s son also called William Mather.

In 1845 John Platt leased part of the Salford Iron Works to the Mather brothers, and William and John form Mather & Platt. John Platt was followed by his son William into the business in 1853, six years after his father’s death.

After a period of expansion, Mather & Platt built the present Park Works site an administration building and eventually joined with Dowson, Taylor & Company Limited, to form Mathers Platt Ltd.

After decades of growth in the UK, the company started to expand internationally from the 1940s into the Indian, American, South African, European and Asian markets where they are still in business today. In the twenty first century Mather & Platt are comprised of several large engineering firms and their core business produces large electrical centrifugal pumps.