We take our third and final look at Avon Rubber for this week's Then and Now. The post war years were a period of rapid growth which saw Avon transformed from a single company to a group of companies.

In 1956, when George Spencer Moulton Company was acquired, by Avon, the pioneers of the rubber industry in the west of England were united. It was in 1956 that the group decided to implement what was considered at the time to be the largest project in its history the modernisation and expansion of its complete tyre manufacturing processes.

January 14, 1958 saw the first Avon television commercial. This seven second advert proclaimed "The tyres that are best are made in the west by Avon of Wiltshire and Wales". By the 1960s, the Melksham plant alone was producing one and a half million tyres annually and wide acclaim was won by the development of a cling rubber tread compound for car and motorcycle tyres, which provided greatly improved wet road grip.

Government recognition of Avon's continuing quest for excellence in product design and manufacture was provided in October 1973 when the Minister for Industrial Development, Christopher Chataway, opened the new Technical Block at Melksham and commissioned a new tyre incinerator and steam-raising unit which was at the time the most modern of its kind in the world.

Avon Rubber continued to grow at the Melksham site over the next decades. But as the company approached the new millennium they took the bold decision to announce the sale of its tyre interest to Cooper Tyre and Rubber Company of Findlay, Ohio, USA.

The £60m sale was concluded in March 1997 and the company became Cooper-Avon Tyres.

The sale included the 35 acre manufacturing site in Melksham and the Avon Sports and Social Club (Melksham House). Our archive picture taken in the 1930s shows the factory entrance at the same place as it is today with the name Cooper on its frontage.