The mini-bus arrived at the factory in good time (thank you Robert) for a refreshing drink provided by our hosts and the tour commenced with a short film about the company’s philosophy of continuous development and capabilities. A question and answer followed prior to a view of both historic and current models.
One of the more interesting watches was only available to pilots who have been obliged to leave their aircraft using Martin-Baker ejection seats where the movement is seated in flexible rubber inside the standard case so that it could withstand the extreme G-forces involved, other limited editions included a model celebrating the achievements of the code breaking staff of Bletchley Park which contains a small piece of one of their, (very rare), code sheets visible on the side of the case.
Bremont have temperature controlled rooms where a small team of highly skilled watchmakers undertake repairs of any quality brand of time-piece. On another floor the main production line assembled their current range amounting to about 12,000 watches a year and they have capacity for twice this. At each stop there were show cases exhibiting the various components and stages in their manufacture.
Currently components are manufactured in Switzerland or Germany, but they have plans to bring some of this back to the UK. This was a well organised, interesting and informative tour by a company used to doing things properly.
Norma Bryan