The large band saw used to cut the blocks of polyester foam. A previously unpublished image.

From an Advertising Feature:
A Burnley-based firm, a "new industry" now employing more than 70 people, which has made a great impact in the upholstered furniture trade in the past four years, is now widening its horizons. Unit 10 Ltd has built up connections with around 80 manufacturers by providing them with high-quality bases for beds, divans, three-piece suites and occasional chairs - to which the various firms add their own individual finishing touches for sale under a variety of brand names. Now Unit 10 is "completing the circle." They have acquired a retail showroom at 195 Colne Road, just above Barden Lane, and have launched into the retail section of the trade. These premises are augmented by an extensive new storage warehouse nearby, in addition and adjacent to the 40,000 sq. ft. workshop already used for their manufacturing processes. They have also acquired extra premises at Walk Mill, Colne, which will further boost production and storage facilities, and provide new employment.

It was in March 1971, that Unit 10 Ltd set up in Burwains House, in premises formerly used by their old established neighbours, Grenfell. At that stage they were suppliers of foam fillings to the local furniture trade, but their rapid expansion has brought ever-widening ranges of customers mainly in the North of England and expansion into producing furniture frames so that they can now give customers the opportunity to acquire the finished product from the wide range of furniture firms with which they have dealt. Managing director Mr Arthur Millington says: "This will be a type of mutual assistance. We are in a position to offer products at very favourable prices."

There is certainly a transformation in this former textile factory into which now come hundreds of tons of hardwood each year, mainly beech, from Sweden, Germany and other Continental countries, to be fabricated into a range of furniture frames. The frames are fitted with a variety of fillings, with the new fabrication processes utilising machines such as the large band saws to cut the blocks of polyester into the required shapes and sizes. The staff also use around 1,000 yards a week of manmade fibres such as Dacron, mainly woven on looms in Lancashire. Now a wide range of the finished goods, previously exported for final processes at unknown destinations, will come back to N. E. Lancashire for the retail trade.