Viners Ltd.

The Viener family originally came from Germany, and the sons Willie, Emile and Adolph were travelling salesmen dealing in cutlery. Having so many contacts within the city, they finally settled in Sheffield in 1900. By 1908 they had moved into the Tiger Works on West Street, where they all lived and worked. Money was scarce and the brothers often worked through the night in order to support themselves. In 1912 they could afford to move the factory to Broomspring Works in Bath Street, where around 60-70 workers produced plated holloware, cutlery and flatware (forks and spoons). In 1925 the company changed their name from A&E Viener Ltd, to Viners Ltd, “for convenience sake”.

By the 1950s Rueben Viner became the managing director and he set about rationalising the factory, making it run on a more production-line basis, reducing the amount of unprofitable lines and promoting cheaper stainless steel cutlery. In the early 1960s the company was importing cutlery made in Hong Kong and finishing and marking it as Viners in Sheffield. This made the company huge profits and allowed them to keep a large stock of cutlery, which was ‘better than money’ when there was such high inflation in the late 1970s. The profits were invested in a massive expansion plan started in 1968, involving new high-tech equipment and factories in Ireland, Australia and France. Eventually the amount of cheaper foreign imports, combined with the unprofitable extra factories and huge interest repayments on bank loans, meant that the company went bankrupt in 1982.