A & G Price Limited is an engineering firm and locomotive manufacturer in Thames, New Zealand founded in 1868.
History
A & G Price was established in 1868 in Princes Street, Onehunga by Alfred Price and George Price, two brothers from Stroud, Gloucestershire. They built almost 100 flax-milling machines in their first year.[1][2] The brothers also built machinery for gold miners. They moved to the Coromandel Gold Rushes in 1871 setting up premises in Beach Road, Thames and closing the Onehunga works in 1873 after building 10 coaches and 12 trucks there for the Public Works Department. The firm's ownership was transferred to a limited liability company in 1907.[3]
Ownership
A & G Price, Thames, early 1900s
A & G Price Limited remained under family management until November 1949[3] when it was bought by Wellington engineers, William Cable & Company. The two companies then exchanged board members but kept their separate identities.[4] Cable bought Downer & Co in 1954 and in 1964 William Cable Holdings was renamed Cable, Price, Downer Limited.[5]
In 1974 the staff of A & G Price alone was in excess of 520 people. Its head office was in Fanshawe Street, Auckland. Beach Road Thames was described as a branch.[6] In 1988 corporate raider Brierley Investments obtained control of the group parent, Cable Price Downer, and broke the group back into its three separate businesses. A & G Price, Beach Road, Thames, was until liquidation part of the Tiri Group,[3] based in Mount Wellington and controlled from Nelson by Tom Sturgess.[7][8]
In July 2017, A & G Price was placed in administration with the loss of 100 jobs.[9][10] The business was bought from the administrator by Christopher Reeve in April 2018. Reeve had been unable to sell the land and buildings.[11] The business now operates with a reduced workforce under Reeve's ownership.[12][13]
Products
A & G Price produced water turbines under the Pelton patent. Lester Allan Pelton invented and a highly efficient turbine patenting it in 1880. Initially, Pelton manufactured and sold the turbines to gold mine operators in the California goldfields, and later licensed the manufacturing to companies across the world. A small A & G Price turbine is on display at the Goldmine Experience in Thames, New Zealand.
Abner Doble helped A & G Price develop a steam engine for buses at the Thames workshops.[14] The first engine was trialled by the Auckland Transport Board in the early 1930s. A second bus was made in 1932 for White and Sons for the Auckland Thames route.[15]
In 2004 a precision-formed yacht keel division was set up to make the Maximus canting keel.[16]
A & G Price and railways
A & G Price was the largest private New Zealand railway locomotive manufacturer, both in terms of output and in terms of supply of rolling stock to the New Zealand Government Railways (NZGR or NZR) and other firms, mainly Bush tramways used for logging timber.[2]
Price manufactured 22 carriages and wagons in the early 1870s, and manufactured two locomotives in the 1880s for private industry, the first being a 0-4-0ST Saddle Tank type locomotive. The Thames Branch railway line opened in 1898, and Price won a tender to make locomotives for NZR in 1903 and 1906.[17] Later in the 1950s and 1960s they manufactured a number of diesel shunting locomotives for the NZR, the TR class, and some for private users.[18]
In the 1920s several petrol tanks were built for NZR and in 1964 for Mobil. 400 LC class wagons were built in 1960.[3]
In 1990 A & G Price regauged 24 of the 31 Silver Star carriages to metre gauge (1000 mm) for running in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand as the Eastern & Oriental Express.[19] Six carriages from this train were stored at Price's Thames workshop in case any extra carriage conversions were required, with the remaining carriages shipped to South East Asia but not refurbished. These carriages were later sold by the Eastern & Oriental Express to private owners in New Zealand.[20]
.jpg)
