Richards of Aberdeen
Encyclopedia
Richards of Aberdeen was a textile
Textile
A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...

 company based in the Hutcheon Street area of Aberdeen
Aberdeen
Aberdeen is Scotland's third most populous city, one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas and the United Kingdom's 25th most populous city, with an official population estimate of ....

, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

.

History

Founded more than 200 years ago, Richards operated what was to become the oldest iron-frame mill in Scotland and the last remaining textile mill in the 'Granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

 City'. It was also one of the principal employers with more than 3,000 people working in the mill at its height in the early 20th century.

Richards of Aberdeen became a public limited company in 1898. With the decline in traditional flax
Flax
Flax is a member of the genus Linum in the family Linaceae. It is native to the region extending from the eastern Mediterranean to India and was probably first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent...

 spinning activities, in the mid-1960s the company embarked upon a programme of development of synthetic yarn ranges which it maintained with few changes until the dawn of the 21st century.

2004 Closure

The company was purchased by millionaire Ian Suttie, chief executive of First Oil, in 2002 after facing receivership. In 2003 the company moved its headquarters to the outskirts of Aberdeen, with assistance from Aberdeen City Council
Aberdeen City Council
Aberdeen City Council represents the Aberdeen City council area of Scotland.The council area was created in 1996, under the Local Government etc. Act 1994...

.

Fifty-two job losses were announced at the start of November 2004, despite the employment of 80 new staff in May of that year. Soon the entire remaining workforce of 196 was made redundant. Many had been at the mill for their entire working lives. Workers were angered not only by news of the closure itself but by the way they discovered what had happened: payments simply stopped arriving in their bank accounts. Another indicator came when supplies ceased to arrive at the site. Aside from global economic
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

 conditions, one of the main factors causing the closure was the company pension scheme which by November 2004 faced a shortfall of £5m
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...

.

Post Closure

The pension scheme continues to cause problems for the mill's former employees and there are calls to wind up the plan as soon as possible.

Future plans

The mill is currently under consideration for possible conversion into an 'urban village
Urban village
An urban village is an urban planning and urban design concept. It refers to an urban form typically characterized by:* Medium density development* Mixed use zoning* The provision of good public transit...

' of 398 homes, many of which would be in historical
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 listed buildings which require careful planning considerations before any work can commence. As of 17 August 2007, the Council remains undecided on the matter.
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