Motor Engineers

Brazil Straker was an established motor-car firm which in 1915 gained contracts to build Rolls Royce Falcon aero engines for the Bristol Fighter. The firm's design office, led by Roy Fedden, then designed its own radial air-cooled engines beginning with a 14-cyliner Mercury - not to be confused with the later 9-cylinder Bristol Mercury. After the First World War the holding company, Cosmos Engineering, failed due to unfortunate speculation, and the aero-engine business was bought by Bristol Aeroplane Company and moved to Patchway as the Aero Engine Division of BAC, and eventually in the 1960s it became a division of Rolls Royce.

Diamonite Holdings, Fishponds, Bristol

Design manufacture and installation of aircraft interiors

The Bristol Type 171 Sycamore helicopter now kept in the Bristol Aero Collection at Kemble, once suffered a broken window, and it was Diamonite who stepped forward to make and donate a replacement sandwich glazing.

A long-established firm in the joinery business, Diamonite went into aircraft interior work and established a reputation in Russia. They had already refurbished 44 airliners to the specifications of customers like the LUK oil giant, creating a "flying boardroom" in a Tu154, up to 26th September 2001, when they announced a refurbishment contract for the fleet of Ministerial aircraft led by the Ilyushin 96 used by President Putin. The company already had a steady line in components for Airbus interiors, but this required the workforce to rise to over 100 and in July 2002 a new factory was opened at Fishponds by MEP the Earl of Stockton. The installation work was done at a variety of airfields which have included Kemble.

A Queen's Award for enterprise in international trade followed in 2003. Sad to say, the company's premises are now (2007) deserted with rumours that the company' business has been taken over and/or transferred to Malaysia.