Clifton & Baird Ltd (machine tool manufacturers : 1908-2002 : Johnstone, Renfrewshire

The machine tool industry formed a small but vital part of Britain's manufacturing sector in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The importance of the industry's contribution to the manufacturing economy was reflected in the influential Mitchell Report of 1960, which recognised that the industry had developed a reputation "throughout the world as an excellent producer of standard machine tools of all categories: it supplies almost the whole home demand for such machine tools and exports approximately 30 per cent of its production". In the West of Scotland it had important links to the heavy engineering and shipbuilding industries that lined the banks of the River Clyde. The town of Johnstone, originally a town of cotton mills and weaving shops, in the latter half of the nineteenth century became a focal point for machine tool manufacture, and was highly renowned for its engineering industries.

Charles Clifton and James Baird founded the machine tool manufacturing company Clifton & Baird in 1908. The site chosen for their office and factory was Empress Works in Johnstone, which had formerly been occupied by the lathe manufacturers John Lang & Sons Ltd, who had moved to larger premises nearby. From the outset the policy of the firm was to specialise in the manufacture of metal cutting-off machines. One of the earliest contracts was with Babcock & Wilcox of Renfrew for the supply of a 2.3/8" spindle horizontal drilling machine weighing 7.5 tons, which was delivered in November 1908.

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