Economy
Ever since its inception as garden city, Welwyn Garden City has attracted a strong commercial base with several designated employment areas. Among the companies trading in the town are:
- Baxters
- British Lead Mills
- Carl Zeiss
- The Danish Bacon Company (DBC foodservice)
- Emis Professional Publishing
- Figleaves.com
- Roche
- IBM
- PayPoint
- Ratcliff Palfinger
- Schering-Plough
- Sigma Corporation
- Tesco
- VEGA Group
- Welwyn Tool Group (formerly Welwyn Tool Company)
- Xerox
Tesco has a head office at Shire Park, a business park in the north of the town, including a full-size supermarket mock-up for staff training.
The Hertfordshire Constabulary has its headquarters in the town.
Welwyn Garden City was once well known as the home of the breakfast cereal Shredded Wheat, formerly made by Nabisco. The disused Shredded Wheat factory with its large white silos is a landmark on rail routes between London and the north of England. The factory, designed by de Soissons and built in 1924 by Peter Lind & Company, is a Grade II listed building. Cereal production moved to Staverton, Wiltshire in 2008 when the owner, Nestlé, decided that the factory required significant and prohibitive investment, due to the age of the building. Tesco had made a planning application for a store, leisure facilities and offices on the site but this was turned down.
The former supermarket chain Fine Fare had its head office in the town at one time, as did ICI's Plastics Division. In 1929 Sir Henry Birkin built the first supercharged Blower Bentley car at his engineering works in Broadwater Road.
During World War II the Special Operations Executive (SOE) had a research department in the town, the Inter-Services Research Bureau, which developed the Welrod pistol and the Welgun sub-machinegun. Station IX was a secret SOE factory making commando equipment at the old Frythe Hotel.
Welwyn Garden City's proximity to London makes it a convenient commuter town.
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Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“Quidquid luce fuit tenebris agit: but also the other way around. What we experience in dreams, so long as we experience it frequently, is in the end just as much a part of the total economy of our soul as anything we “really” experience: because of it we are richer or poorer, are sensitive to one need more or less, and are eventually guided a little by our dream-habits in broad daylight and even in the most cheerful moments occupying our waking spirit.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Everyone is always in favour of general economy and particular expenditure.”
—Anthony, Sir Eden (1897–1977)