Polythene (known also as polyethylene) was first invented in 1936, with
polypropylene discovered in the early 1950s. Tavak Products Ltd started out in a small ‘garage’ in the St
Johns’ district of Woking soon after the Second World War and as such we were one of the first companies in this
country to manufacture machines for heat-sealing these revolutionary new plastic films.
In 1958 the company became incorporated and moved to much larger premises a couple of miles away in the village of Bisley,
Surrey. Here we began manufacturing specialist items using our knowledge of the plastics industry and our own machinery.
Many people ask what the name ‘Tavak’ means. The answer is simple, it is made up of the initials of the
original owners.
In the late 1960s the company was bought by a neighbouring engineering company
who, in 1989, sold the company to Hulme-Martin Ltd - a London based manufacturer
of heat-sealing machines that had also been in business since soon after the
Second World War.
At that stage Tavak ceased to make their own range of sealers and concentrated on the manufacture of specialist plastic film
products. These range from large one-off items (such as ducts for growing mushrooms), through complicated multi-component,
multi-layered items (such as bellows for lung testing machines), to production runs of tens of thousands for tapered
‘herb’ bags, tinted piping bags, and other special shaped bags in polythene and polypropylene.
In 2006 Hulme-Martin Ltd ceased trading and the following year Tavak Ltd was
sold to the present owners – Wiag Ltd (again made up of the initials
of its owners) - whilst a new company, Hulme-Martin Heatsealers Ltd was set
up in a separate ‘management buyout’ of the machine side of the
business in 2005 .
Both companies have now moved to new premises next door to each other on
the Country Business Centre at White Cottage Farm in Lucas Green Road, West
End – half
a mile from the old Bisley premises and just a mile from junction 3 of the M3
motorway.
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To visit the Hulme-Martin Heatsealers site, please click
here.
