Tucked into the heart of Mid-Wales, the unassuming market town of Newtown – Y Drenewydd, carries a legacy far richer than its gently humming streets might suggest. Once home to just 1,500 people, it now supports a community of over 13,000, yet its roots remain deeply embedded in the industrious spirit that shaped it.
While recent years have seen a blossoming of arts and cultural spaces, Newtown’s identity is still firmly tied to its past as a machinery town, a place built by hands, driven by labour, and powered by purpose.
Founded as a planned settlement, Newtown’s growth was marked by a pivotal moment in 1827: the construction of a bridge linking it to the neighbouring area of Penygloddfa. The reason? Flannel. The fabric that stitched together not just garments, but the town’s economy, community and character.
Weaving through change
“… since the beginning of the present century [Newtown] has, from the celebrity of its flannel manufacture, risen into importance and obtained a distinguished rank among the manufacturing and commercial towns in this part of the principality.” - Samuel Lewis’s A Topographical Dictionary of Wales 1833
For centuries, weaving was carried out in cottages that combined living quarters on the lower floors with handloom workshops above. However, by the turn of the 19th century, conditions were shifting, paving the way for greater organisation within the industry. External pressures, most notably the war in Europe against Revolutionary France, drove up demand for cloth to produce uniforms for soldiers fighting Napoleon’s armies. At the same time, significant changes were also unfolding in Montgomeryshire.
Newtown’s industry and style was beginning to flourish. Tall brick mills rose beside the River Severn, their waterwheels turning day and night, the heartbeat of the town was undoubtedly tied to industry. Up to 500 individuals were employed as power loom weavers, and remarkably, around 60% of these workers were concentrated in the rapidly developing district of Penyglodfa during its period of swift development.
The evolution from handcrafted to automated textiles
Before the advent of machinery in the 18th century, wool mills relied on long, laborious manual labour. However, two processes were mechanised earlier than the rest.
The first was carding, traditionally done by hand using a pair of wooden cards. This process involved straightening the wool fibres in preparation for spinning them into thread. The second was fulling, which removed oil and dirt from the woven cloth while also tightening the weave through shrinkage.
Originally, fulling involved soaking the cloth in a mixture of water, fuller’s earth, and urine, then repeatedly treading on it. With the rise of mechanisation, particularly harnessing the power of the River Severn, waterwheels began to drive hammers, replacing the need for human-powered mills.
The introduction of the power loom, a machine capable of weaving cloth far faster than any handloom, marked a seismic shift in textile production. It not only increased output but also centralised production in mills, moving it out of homes and into industrial settings.
Seizing the power of mechanisation in the textile industry
During this time, a Welsh local entrepreneur was emerging on the woollen scene. Sir Pryce Pryce-Jones, born in Llanwchaiarn, just outside Newtown, pioneered the first mail-order business, revolutionising how clothes made from Welsh flannels were sold. In 1859, the railway came to town, and Pryce-Jones saw the potential in harnessing this new technology. Breathing new life into the town his drapery shop, aptly named the Royal Welsh Warehouse, flourished, selling local Welsh flannel, which went on to form the mainstay of Pryce-Jones’ business.
For the first time, customers could place orders by post and receive the goods via the railway, this visionary turned a small rural company into a globally recognised business. With an impressive list of customers such as Florence Nightingale, Queen Victoria, the Princess of Wales and many other royal households across Europe – soon Newtown started selling to America and Australia, amassing over 200,000 customers.
The Royal Welsh Warehouse, located in the centre of Newtown, a building that has stood the test of time and remains a prominent feature in the town today, employed over 300 people. Each day three freight wagons of ‘Real Welsh Flannel direct from the looms’ of Newtown were transported to London ready to be distributed globally. Pryce-Jones pioneered an industry now worth around £75bn and has been recognised as a company like today’s Amazon.
The decline of a textile powerhouse
With the dawn of the twentieth century, Newtown’s flannel industry was diagnosed as terminal. Unable to compete with its more efficient rivals in Lancashire and Yorkshire, Pryce Jones’ successful innovations only delayed the inevitable collapse of the mid-Wales flannel industry.
Not one to miss an opportunity, whilst the flannel itself was still produced using increasingly mechanised processes, Pryce-Jones’s genius lay in automating the distribution and marketing of these goods, turning local production into a global enterprise.
Pryce Jones installed his own printing press in the Royal Welsh Warehouse, producing multi-page bound illustrated catalogues, devoid of lengthy jargon trying to re-ignite the Welsh flannel trade. Instead, it highlighted the newly diversified wares, transitioning into an authentic department store.
By 1907, Pryce-Jones’s catalogues portrayed a lifestyle far removed from the gritty realities of textile production in early 20th-century Newtown. By the end of the 1950s, a century had passed since he first established his business - one that had survived two world wars and a rapidly evolving manufacturing landscape. Pryce-Jones was a true pioneer; one whom boosted employment in rural Wales, embraced new technologies, and helped to shape the modern shopping experience we know today.
Laura Ashley and the revival of Welsh textile manufacturing
While Pryce-Jones helped put Newtown on the map through industrial innovation and early retail logistics, the town’s legacy in textiles didn’t end with the decline of flannel. Decades later, another visionary would awaken anew the region’s manufacturing identity, this time through design, branding, and a return to romantic aesthetics.
Laura Ashley, whose name would become synonymous with delicate florals and country-inspired fashion, established a manufacturing base in Mid-Wales that not only revived local textile production but also brought new technologies and employment opportunities to the area. In its prime, the business employed around 900 people in Mid-Wales, and for over 40 years the company’s presence made Laura Ashley one of the largest private employers in the area. Her success marked a new chapter in the story of Welsh textiles, one where creativity met commerce, and tradition found a place in the modern marketplace.
During the 1960s, the Ashleys opened their first shop in Machynlleth and developed a full-scale factory in Carno. This move provided a significant employment boost to the area, and as the business grew, operations expanded to a modern factory in Newtown, taking advantage of better infrastructure while remaining rooted in the region
Blending traditional design with modern production
Originating from hand-printing fabrics, Laura Ashley quickly scaled production using modern screen-printing techniques and later, factory-based manufacturing.
In the early days of 1950, Laura Ashley invested £10 in materials and designed napkins, table mats, and tea towels, which were then printed by her husband, Bernard using a homemade screen-printing machine in their attic. As demand grew, a flat-bed printing machine was developed so they could produce up to 5,000 metres of fabric per week. Shifting significantly from artisanal to semi-industrial production and making it a pioneer in design-led manufacturing.
By the 1980s, Laura Ashley had a worldwide presence in Europe, the U.S and Asia and with 220 stores globally, the brand won the Queen’s Award for Export in 1977. Even after her death in 1985, Laura Ashley’s legacy continued to evolve and as of lately has collaborated with brands such as Next and Urban Outfitters, with a renewed focus on sustainability and digital retail.
From the 500 power loom weavers of the 19th century to the 900 factory workers employed by Laura Ashley in the 1980s, manufacturing has remained the backbone of Newtown’s economy.
Powering innovation in modern manufacturing
As the textile industry evolved and eventually declined, Newtown once again adapted, this time embracing the rise of electrical engineering and automation. Just like its forefathers, Pryce-Jones and Laura Ashley, had transformed the town through enterprise and innovation, a new chapter began with the arrival of Control Techniques. A company that would position Newtown at the forefront of global drive technology, now part of the Nidec Group, this modern manufacturer continues the town’s legacy of combining technological advancement with local employment, proving that Newtown’s industrial spirit is far from a thing of the past.
Founded in 1973 under the name KTK in a rapidly emerging drives market, Ken Briggs, Trevor Wheatley and Kevin Curran chose Newtown as it’s base due to the readily available premises and local government support for industrial development. In 1985 the business upsized its premises and repositioned itself as Control Techniques, it had been enjoying fast and profitable growth and needed to expand to keep up with product demand.
Control Techniques has since created a global name for itself as pioneers in the drives industry. Recognising market opportunities and introducing a series of world’s first products to the market. Their electric drive and servo solutions are at the core of food production, movement of materials and people, to keeping us comfortable in any environment.
The global drives and servo manufacturing business has expanded over the last 50 years and now operates in over 70 countries. Meaning they are optimally positioned to provide fast and efficient service and support to their customers, when it’s needed.
Nidec Drives and the growth of skilled employment in Mid-Wales
Control Techniques grew from 3 founders to over 1,400 employees globally, and as of 2024, 636 people were employed in Newtown, making it the largest private employer in the town. Now known as Nidec Drives, the company has remained committed to the region with its Headquarters, manufacturing and Research and Development facilities remaining firmly planted in the town.
Over the years, Nidec Drives has pioneered several world-first technologies, ranging from the world’s smallest drive, the first fully digital DC drive, the first practical flux vector AC drive, to the world’s first universal AC drive. The products are revered in robotics, aerospace, medical devices, and industrial automation.
Whilst Nidec Drives doesn’t manufacture textiles directly, its technology plays a vital role in the global textile supply chain. From powering high-speed weaving and knitting machines to driving the precision systems used in fabric cutting, packaging, and labelling, Nidec drives solutions help manufacturers achieve greater speed, flexibility, and energy efficiency.
This impact isn’t just theoretical, Nidec Drives’ technology is actively powering textile operations globally. One example of this can be seen in Italy, with Trinca Technology.
Alongside Nidec Drives’ integrated solutions, Trinca Technology manufactures some of the world’s most advanced looms, delivering exceptional productivity and quality even in the most demanding textile applications. The Italian textile machinery industry is a global benchmark for innovation, and Trinca stands out as one of the few companies producing fully digitally controlled looms with outstanding performance.
Moving beyond conventional cotton and silk, Trinca has embraced technical textiles, developing looms capable of handling geotextiles, meshes, Kevlar, and other industrial fabrics. Their latest venture involved creating an open, high-performance digital platform designed to maximise output and quality while allowing for rapid reconfiguration to meet changing production needs.
To achieve this, Trinca integrated Nidec’s high-dynamic Unimotor HD servo motors and high-performance Digitax HD servo drives, controlled by MCe and MCz motion controllers. This combination enabled precise control, fast acceleration, and seamless adaptability. Key advantages in modern textile manufacturing where speed, flexibility, and energy efficiency are critical.
Understanding VFDs, the power behind modern textile machinery
To deliver the speed, precision, and adaptability required by today’s textile manufacturers, advanced motion control systems are essential. At the core of these systems are Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs) and servo motor technologies, which enable machines to operate with exceptional efficiency and responsiveness.
Unimotor HD is a range of high-performance brushless servo motors designed for applications demanding rapid acceleration and deceleration, thanks to their low-inertia design. Paired with Digitax servo drives, which offer top-tier performance in a compact footprint, these components form the backbone of high-speed, digitally controlled textile machinery.
Trinca’s latest generation of looms are powered by these advanced motion control systems from Nidec Drives, enabling record-breaking performance with gripper speeds up to 15 m/s and beat-up frequencies reaching 250 bpm, equivalent to a force of 80 tonnes. At the heart of this innovation are the MCe embedded controller and MCz industrial PC, which manage the entire system using open, standard tools like Windows and the Codesys development environment.
A high-speed EtherCAT network connects controllers, drives, and remote I/Os, ensuring seamless communication and precision. Integrated MiS250 safety modules add decentralised motion safety features (STO, SBC, SSx), reducing wiring complexity and speeding up commissioning.
What makes these looms truly exceptional is the software, a digital cam refreshed every machine turn, constantly adjusting motion profiles to meet dynamic production needs. This ensures every revolution is optimised for quality and performance. As Luca Trinca explains:
“Unlike machines built for a single product, our solution offers flexibility, easily reconfigured to meet changing demands. That’s thanks to our know-how, the support of Nidec Drives engineers, and a trusted local motion control partner.”
From threads to technology, a legacy of innovation
From the rhythmic clatter of handlooms to the hum of precision -engineered drives, it is evident that Newtown has always been defined by innovation. While the tools have changed, at the heart of each technological leap stands this unassuming Welsh town, quietly shaping industries far beyond its borders. It is a place that produces exceptional thinkers and attracts those with bold ideas and the drive to realise them.
Today, Nidec Drives continues that legacy, not by weaving fabric, but by powering the machines that do. Its technology supports textile manufacturers across the globe, while its presence in Mid-Wales fuels local employment, skills development, and global impact.
As Newtown continues to evolve, what other industries might take root in its fertile ground of innovation? Share your thoughts on how tradition and technology can coexist in modern manufacturing.