CM Visit: Holt Lloyd International
We tour the R&D facilities of the car care experts.
Holts will be a familiar name to any DIY or professional mechanic. Looking around my garage at home, I spotted a can of their release fluid, a tube of Gun Gum exhaust paste and a bottle of Radweld. And I carry an aerosol can of Tyreweld in a few of my cars.
The company was established in 1919 when Douglas Holt, who had worked for the Austin Motor Company during World War One, opened a small shop selling spare car parts. A trip to the USA in 1936 opened his eyes when he came across several automotive products for repairing common problems, such as coolant leaks. He returned home and began developing products that would plug this hole in the market.
During the 1930s, engine coolant did not contain antifreeze, so cracked cylinderheads were a common problem in freezing weather. Douglas developed and launched Wondarweld for fixing coolant problems on motor vehicle engines, and also a version to seal domestic and institutional boilers. He also formulated Radweld for fixing radiator leaks.
After World War Two, Douglas continued to develop new products, often based on his own dilemmas. For instance, when he needed to patch a hole in his car’s exhaust system, he realised there was a market for such a product and developed Gun Gum, which is still available today.
In 1948, Holts became a family business, with Douglas’s eldest son joining as a chemist. Two years later, the business expanded into France and formed an alliance with General Motors, before spreading across Europe.
In 1964, Holts acquired Romac Ind Ltd, which manufactured tyre and motor repair accessories. The two companies developed the safetybelt buckle and Tyreweld, which remains a top seller today.
Holts merged with Lloyds Industries in 1975 and, to date, is known as Holt Lloyd International. The business has expanded by acquiring more brands, including Redex, Prestone and Simoniz.
Testing times
My visit to Holts in Manchester wasn’t solely to examine the different products they offer, but to tour their research and development facilities to help understand how they formulate particular products. Prestone screenwash for instance, was tested using a sheet of glass covered in a film of dirt to replicate bugs, oil, fuel and anything else that coats the windscreen of a vehicle. The glass was positioned at a similar angle to a windscreen and, using a pipette, Prestone screenwash and competitors’ products were applied to see how effective they were at working through the dirt, with the results sent back to the labs to help the chemists refine the formula.
A similar test facility was created for Holts brake cleaner. A sheet of steel was evenly coated in an oily residue, then the brake cleaner sprayed onto a patch to assess how it broke down and dispersed the oil.
The creative methods of testing products has meant that the R&D people have often had to manufacture their own equipment. For the Simoniz range of car shampoo and wax, the product needed to be mixed with water and agitated to assess how foam was generated and how long it would remain stable. Such a controlled method of mixing water and shampoo led product development manager Richard Hitchman to build a straightforward but effective piece of equipment from wood, which enabled several mixtures to be agitated equally. “The method is repeatable and reproducible, and designed using Six Sigma tools,” he explained. “This is the case with all in-house test method development.”
Not all of the test equipment at Holts is manufactured in-house. A range of equipment used to test the freezing point of coolant and screenwash under differing weather conditions was bought in. They even have a machine which can replicate different weather conditions for testing the durability of wax products and tyre shine. The machine simulates rain and ultraviolet light, with the lab test results supplementing the realworld testing carried out by the team.
Often, test equipment isn’t required, such as when ensuring the effectiveness of Tyreweld. For this, different-sized holes were made in the tread of a tyre, before using Tyreweld to assess if the damage could be repaired. A similar approach was applied to the Holts Headlight Restoration Kit. Different designs of opaque headlights were restored using the kit and the results compared to ensure consistency in use.