Autometric Pumps

Autometric Pumps Ltd was a pump manufacturer at Lower Waterside, Maidstone, Kent (telephone Maidstone 4728, telegrams 'Autometric Maidstone'). Its founding date has not been found: the earliest record traced is a London Gazette notice of March 1958, in which Autometric Pumps Limited of Maidstone, 'manufacturers of all types of pumps', petitioned the High Court to wind up the Flowmeter Manufacturing Company. Advertisements in The Engineer in February 1959, 1960 and 1969 offered 'Autometric pumps for many purposes': centrifugal, gear, single- and multi-stage turbine, mini-gear, hand-rotary, oscillating-piston, roller-vane, vacuum and diaphragm-vacuum pumps, and a 1/20 hp motorised unit. Related companies of the same name in Kent, Autometric Foundry Ltd of Chatham, Autometric Properties Ltd and Autometric Packaging Machines Ltd, appear in the Gazette between 1974 and 1984.

In 1958 the firm issued three leaflets, LR1 to LR3, each headed 'as approved by the Rover Co. Ltd for use with the Land-Rover' and stamped into the Automobile Association's technical library on 5 December 1958. LR1 described the RS50/HV nylon roller-vane pump, a self-priming bronze unit that slipped straight onto the 1 1/8 in or 1 3/8 in six-spline rear PTO shaft of a Land Rover or tractor, held by a torque chain, and gave 360 gallons an hour at up to 80 psi at 540 rpm with handwheel pressure control, for emergency firefighting, washdown and cattle, weed, crop and fruit spraying. LR2 covered the HA7502 multi-stage turbine pump, belt-driven from a splined PTO pulley on a tailboard mounting, with outputs to 2,500 gallons an hour and 100 psi at 1,720 rpm and a 27 ft suction lift. LR3 covered the C150/OA single-stage centrifugal pump on the PTO shaft for irrigation and liquid transfer. Each needed the Land Rover rear power take-off and, on petrol models, the hand throttle.

A company named Autometric Pumps Limited was listed for striking off the register in October 1974, but a company of the name was still in business in 1992, when its directors called a meeting of creditors under section 98 of the Insolvency Act 1986 for 27 October 1992 at Maidstone, the first step in a creditors' voluntary liquidation.

A new Autometric Pumps Limited (company 03205366) was incorporated on 30 May 1996 with Colin Savage of Detling, Brian William (Bill) Prior of Bearsted and Savage's sons Andrew and Martin as officers. Savage and Prior had founded Mid Kent Electrical Engineering (MKE) at Detling in 1955, and by 2002 MKE's five engineering disciplines included 'autometric pumps', trading as MKE Autometric Pumps from Chiltern Works, The Street, Detling, and later from MKE's Dolphin Park site at Sittingbourne; an ExxonMobil equipment-builder listing for MKE Autometric Pumps still carried 'C' series centrifugal and 'HA' and 'HB' multi-stage turbine pumps. The 1996 company filed its last accounts as non-trading in 2018 and was dissolved on 24 December 2019. MKE Engineering Group continues at Sittingbourne as a pump repairer and Xylem distributor, but no longer lists an Autometric division.