Rotork plc is a British-based manufacturing

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...

 company. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange

London Stock Exchange

The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...

 and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index

FTSE 250 Index

The FTSE 250 Index is a capitalisation-weighted index consisting of the 101st to the 350th largest companies on the London Stock Exchange. Promotions to and demotions from the index take place quarterly in March, June, September and December...

.
The Company was established as a small engineering

Engineering

Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...

 workshop in Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

 in the 1940s. In 1945 it was acquired by Frenchay Products led by Jeremy Fry

Jeremy Fry

Jeremy Joseph Fry was a British inventor, engineer, entrepreneur, adventurer and arts patron.-Early life:Born into the Fry family on May 19, 1924 in Bristol, he was the second son of Cecil Roderick Fry who as the last chairman of the J. S. Fry & Sons chocolate concern arranged for the sale of the...

 under whose leadership it made its first actuator

Actuator

An actuator is a type of motor for moving or controlling a mechanism or system. It is operated by a source of energy, usually in the form of an electric current, hydraulic fluid pressure or pneumatic pressure, and converts that energy into some kind of motion. An actuator is the mechanism by which...

 in 1952. It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange

London Stock Exchange

The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...

 in 1968 as Rotork Controls.

Protech Instruments & Systems, an instrumentation company, was purchased in 1985 to expedite the development of Pakscan, a digital bus control system for actuators.

In 1999 it bought Fluid System Srl, an Italian actuator business, in 2000 it bought Skilmatic in Leeds

Leeds

Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...

 and in 2002 it acquired Jordan Controls, a United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 actuator business.