The cover of Perry Engineering's Golden Jubilee Book celebrating fifty years, published in 1947.     By 1986, Boral's fortieth anniversary, the company had 17,000 employees worldwide and 51,000 shareholders. In February of that year, Boral expanded its involvement in the manufacturing and engineering industries with the acquisition of Johns Perry Limited. This company resulted from the 1966 merger of Johns and Waygood Company, a Melbourne-based lift manufacturing and engineering company, and Perry Engineering, one of Adelaide's oldest established engineering companies. At the end of 1985 Peter Yunghams, a Melbourne lawyer turned corporate raider, had received some publicity about his growing shareholding in Johns Perry. The company had a very profitable lift division and was also involved in some areas of manufacturing that complemented Cyclone's steel, tube and wire products for the rural sector in the form of springs, strapping and rope. Johns Perry also had a general engineering division and some foundries, but the company's profitability was less than it could have been. One Monday morning in November 1985, Eric Neal telephoned Don Laidlaw with whom he had negotiated the Quarry Industries acquisition; Laidlaw had retired as an executive with Johns Perry at the end of 1973 but retained his position on the board. Neal was calling from Launceston where he was attending a board meeting of Launceston Gas Company. On his arrival in Tasmania, he picked up a hire car to drive up to Launceston. On the road up, he drove past Johns Perry's new factory at Breadalbane. With time to kill on a Sunday afternoon, Neal had driven around the back of the factory, found a gate open and taken himself on a 'Cook's tour' of the business. He rang Laidlaw to ask him who was buying Johns Perry shares and Laidlaw told him about Yunghams. Neal said, 'Well, we have a list of about fifty companies that we are interested in, Johns Perry is not one of them, but you've told me in the past that the lift business is good. I'm going to be down here (in Launceston) for a couple of days, I'll organise for someone in Sydney to come down with some Johns Perry annual accounts for me to read.' When Neal returned to Sydney he talked to Johns Perry's chairman Bob Millar as well as two other directors. Boral acquired about 20 per cent of Johns Perry from institutional investors and Yunghams, and then made a takeover bid offering Johns Perry shareholders $5 a share, or five Boral shares for every three Johns Perry shares. The Boral share price rose and the offer was worth $5.60 to Johns Perry shareholders. Rumours circulated about counter bids, but none eventuated and the takeover went through rapidly.           The History of Perry Engineering Perry Engineering started in 1897 when Samuel Perry, a blacksmith from Shropshire, came to Adelaide and started a foundry and forge. He died in 1930, leaving the business to his nephew, Frank Perry, on one condition: if the business made a loss in any one year, it was to be closed and sold. To his credit, the younger Perry managed to keep the company going through the Depression and World War II. In 1947, Perry decided to make it a public company, as they were doing a considerable amount of contract work for the mines at Broken Hill. The underwriter of the share issue, E.L. & C. Ballieu, arranged for North Broken Hill, Broken Hill South and Zinc Corporation each to take a 10 per cent interest in Perry Engineering, while the family retained slightly over 50 per cent.   Perry Engineering staff outside the Adelaide factory in the 1920s. Boral still operates from this site.     Don Laidlaw joined Perry Engineering in 1956, and was involved in changing the nature of the business. He said, 'We went back into structural steelwork for buildings. At that stage the South Australian economy was buoyant, and we started to make mechanical presses for the car industry.' General Motors, Ford and Chrysler had all decided to build large steel press shops there. During the next eight years, the company manufactured about four hundred mechanical presses for automotive and general industry. Laidlaw says, 'This became a bread-and-butter line.' In 1965 Sir Thomas Playford, who had been the Liberal Premier of South Australia for twenty-nine years, was voted out of office. At the same time, the expansion of the car industry tapered off, BHP completed its steelworks at Whyalla and the Torrens Island power station had been completed. Ten years of boom in South Australia came to an end. In 1966 Perry Engineering merged with the Melbourne-based engineering and lift company, Johns and Waygood, which had been operating since the 1860s. The company was called Johns and Waygood Perry Engineering and did not change its name to Johns Perry until 1976.   An illustration from Perry Engineering's Golden Jubilee Book emphasising the company's commitment to the war effort.     »»