Associated Weavers International Group is a Belgian

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 textile

Textile

A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...

 manufacturing company. The company head office in located in Ronse

Ronse

Ronse is a Belgian city and a municipality in the Flemish province of East Flanders. The municipality only comprises the city of Ronse proper.- Early settlements to 14th century :...

.

History

The company was founded in Bradford, West Yorkshire and run by the Abrahams family. By the early 1970s the site employed 2,500 people and was the world's largest producer of Axminster woven carpets and Europe's largest producer of tufted printed carpets. At that time the company was principally led by managing director David Croft and the design director Mike Kelly. In 1973 Associated Weavers was taken over by the American group, Champion International and by the mid 1970s Associated Weavers started the production of tufted printed carpets in Ronse, Belgium. Despite the fact that, at one time, the company produced one in seven of all carpets bought in the UK it was not a widely known brand-name.

Due a rapid contraction of the UK carpet sector the Bradford site was sold in the early 1980s and in 1984 Champion International decided to withdraw from the carpet industry altogether. The company was bought by its management and the Associated Weavers International Group was created.

In 1990 the company acquired Prado, which was founded in 1909 as Tissage Van de Wiele. In 1997 the company registered on the Brussels Stock Exchange. In 1998 the company expanded into the Czech Republic

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

 and in 2001 it took over the French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

company, Balsan.

A major relaunch and re-branding is expected in early 2011.

Source

• Associated Weavers (Dutch)
• Top 500 (Dutch)
• Beaulieu-tak Colle koopt Associated Weavers (Dutch)