Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

Reading the news today I came across a small column devoted to the closure of the last Philips UK Factory .

The electronics giants last presence in UK will close in 2020, another sad day although reading closer the factory actually makes baby bottles!! under the name of Avent.

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

When I heard about this I wasn't surprised, as I've not seen anything from Philips for well over 15 years.

Their televisions and radios used to be everywhere, but sadly not anymore.

However, as you say, they were the Avent. We still have some Avent bottles and a steriliser in the loft. Those were the days :)

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

Yes, Philips is now a shadow of the company it once was.

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

I remember years ago them announcing they were moving away from consumer and concentrating on health products. No doubt where the money is. I'm guessing the bottle factory was just acquired via a takeover of an existing company.

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

Philips still exist - and have a wide range of areas of interest, which still includes consumer products.

See https://www.philips.co.uk/

I remember having a Philishave electric shaver as a teenager.

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

When I worked for Philips, they made virtually everything. Now I suspect most of it is outsourced. Possibly any professional products are still 'in house'.

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

I bought a Philips shaver a couple of years ago. I was very surprised to see that it was 'assembled in Holland' (or some similar wording) though the cynic in me assumed probably from Chinese parts. Anyway, it continues to give good service.

Back in the sixties and seventies we were very much a Philips household.

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

Philips still produce Tv's, they're made by TP Vision, the Honk Kong arm of Philips. TPV used to make monitors for hospital use and were considered to be very well calibrated.
From a service point of view support now is very limited compared to the 'Croyden' days. I always thought of Philips as one of the most innovative companies with a list of 'firsts' as long as your arm. The research centre at Redhill is now demolished! Are we going to have any 'brains' in this country if everything is made in China? I remember seeing the very first Digibox for UK digital Tv at Redhill. Designed by people here in the UK. Seems all very sad... SJM.

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

That's unfortunately incorrect. TPV was a reasonably succesful Taiwanese monitor manufacturer (their heritage goes back to Admiral Overseas Corporation) that took over Philips monitors Taiwan in 2006 to become a worldwide first tier OEM for monitors, dabbling a bit in somewhat lower end television sets. In 2012, they created the joint venture TP Vision for television manufacturing to take over the television branch of Philips. The joint venture is now fully owned by TPV (not by Philips). They made their headquarters in Hong Kong probably for tax and manufacturing reasons (as a Chinese company, they are allowed to manufacture in China without involving third parties). It's been said that the name TP accurately reflects what you're watching when you buy one, but I'd like to think they're gradually improving their products.
I'm not sure about TPV, but Philips kept their medical monitor branch outside the 2006 takeover, and continued with their 3 Italian suppliers F.I.M.I. (historically known as Phonola, now owned by Barco), A-Novo (spin off from F.I.M.I.?) and Philips Medical Systems Monza (used to be a Philips consumer electronics factory).

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

Philips took over Avent. I think Avent was a US company originally, with a UK branch.

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

Philips plowed huge sums of money into several product flops. For example V2000 video, DCC cassette, CD-i and laserdisc. Conversely, Compact Cassette and CD were world beaters. Great innovators, but Philips were not always on the ball marketing wise as were - in general - competing Japanese consumer goods companies.

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

I'm afraid their demise is only for a small part due to marketing errors. From the late 1980's onwards, they've been selling off strong moneymakers as well as some branches that would have greatly benefited from the synergy and could have become future money makers but now remained small or had to be terminated. I'm still thinking they only sold off the Lighting branch when they did, because the Medical branch was unsellable at the moment (the CEO had to take over, things went wrong in the US, as they do). Main goal seems still to sell everything, which is not a healthy long term corporate goal but seems a good idea for stock investors and company executives.

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

Philips are moving to an Intellectual Property company with outsourced manufacturing. It's the only way they're going to survive against the influx of other people doing it.

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

Thanks Maarten for the correction over this. Perhaps I should have said it's just the Philips name that continues on Tv's! i.e. Bush et al. I read about TPV from some sales info at the time over the split you mentioned (2012). One of the key points was that the quality of the hospital monitors would be now in the domestic products.... As you mentioned in post #9, they can only sell off assets for so long. SJM.

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

That seems a bit misguided of them, and I'm not sure that's even their long time strategy. It may have started out as panic management, then became pleasuring shareholders and now it could be just a chronic lack of vision while still pleasuring shareholders. Of course there would be a narrative, and at some point in time that may have been true, is true or will be true but a narrative is not a vision or a viable course. Narratives are just... A trendy thing, not something that can be held, touched or will have perpetual real world value. Samsung seems to know this, see my next post.

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

Strange thing is that I've never seen a hospital like quality in any of their domestic products, before or after the take over. Their last generation CRT monitors looked very sloppyly built compared to the last generation of Philips Taiwan monitors and the LCD monitors seem to be somewhere in between the former Philips and former TPV quality. A far cry from the high end sets from Italy that have sporadically made it to the home and signage market. Their TV sets seem mediocre and have inherited both the Philips and TPV weak points. I see, or at least imagine to see, slow improvement. TP Vision have decided to take up firmware writing themselves and have even kept some of their Belgian development staff. They may in the end do better than Philips, but for the coming years it seems Samsug will have the best position to market their sets.

Surprise: Samsung does almost everything themselves, just as Philips did when they were the go to decent quality brand. It seems to work very well for them. Maybe they even had a look at Philips history.

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

My understanding is the Philips always were strong in intellectual property and encouraged innovation.. Their patent department was run as a business unit that filed, and paid the prosecution costs of, patents for any worthwhile inventions made by the subsidiary companies, licenced the inventions to third parties, and collected the royalties. A different philosophy from GEC and Marconi, where individual businesses had to pay the costs of getting their patents out of their budgets, although they did (usually) benefit from any royalty income.

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

A coincidence that they followed the lead of ex-subsidiary Ekco into plastics!
My Wife had one of those face masks with an air pump to help with sleeping (only briefly, she didn't get on with it). As well as the apparatus itself, Philips handled the medical side, including the diagnosis, over the Internet. It was most certainly made to hospital standards.

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

Well, selling off viable business sectors is a marketing error.

Re: Philips to close last UK Factory.(Glemsford)
 

I suspect that some of the demise is due to making junk products. Around 25 years ago I bought an early CD burner (a CD2600 I think) which could supposedly read at 6-times speed, except that it couldn't. More than 2x and it just produced errors. Around the same time I bought an answering machine. A wonderful thing which did everything apart from actually answer calls. It turned out to be a manufacturing error. You could send them back to Philips to be fixed free of charge, but mine was in the bin by than. I vowed never to buy another Philips product and I never have despite sometimes tempting prices.

Having said that, hotels in France always seem to have Philips TVs in the rooms so I assume Philips have some special agreement with the hotel industry here.