Thorn Lighting

Thorn Lighting Ltd.

Type	Private
Industry	Lighting
Founded	1928/03/29
Founder	Sir Jules Thorn
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Martin Brandt, COO Eladia Pulido, Global Sales and Marketing Director Chris Short, European Director of TQM and LSS Terry Carmichael, Global Operations Director Yves Robillard, Product Management Director Philip Widner, Head of Controlling Paul Stranks, Global Marketing Director
Products	Professional luminaires and controls
Revenue	€869 million EUR (£728.3 million GBP) (2012)
Number of employees	7,814 (Zumtobel Group)
Parent	Zumtobel Group
Website	www.thornlighting.com

Thorn Lighting Ltd, a subsidiary of the Austrian company Zumtobel Group, is a global supplier of both outdoor and indoor luminaires and integrated controls.

Thorn was founded when Sir Jules Thorn started The Electric Lamp Service Company Ltd, in 1928, dealing in incandescent filament lamps. In 1936, renamed Thorn Electrical Industries Ltd, the company was floated on the . Continuous post-war expansion followed and the organisation seized a variety of lighting, engineering and consumer electronics businesses, merging with EMI in 1979 to create Thorn EMI, which itself demerged in the mid-1990s.

In 1994, following a leveraged management buy-out, Thorn Lighting Ltd floated on the London Stock Exchange as TLG plc (the Thorn Lighting Group) until it was acquired by Wassall plc four years later. In 2000, Wassall plc was purchased in order to merge TLG with the luminaire business of the Zumtobel Group, an acquisition financed with the assistance of private equity firm KKR who subsequently reduced its position. Thorn is now fully owned by the Zumtobel Group.

The Thorn brand started life as the Electric Lamp Service Company Limited, established by Sir Jules Thorn on 29 March 1928, importing incandescent filament lamps and radio valves from the continent. Faced with increased import duties, introduced to aid British manufacturing, Jules Thorn bought his first lighting factory, the Atlas Lamp Works Ltd in Edmonton, north London in 1932. In 1936 the company went public as Thorn Electrical Industries.

The lamp businesses prospered until 1939 when production was geared to military needs. When war broke out a second lamp site, run by the Vale Royal Electric Lamp Company, was bought in nearby Tottenham - in case Edmonton was bombed.

When the war ended, Jules Thorn continued expansion through investing in new plants, partnerships and acquisitions, including the opening of an incandescent lamp operation in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales in 1947; a technology transfer with Sylvania Electric Products Inc. to mass-produce tubular fluorescent lamps in Enfield, north London and taking over 51% of Ekco-Ensign Electric (Ekco) in 1950, which added a further incandescent lamp factory – in Preston, Lancashire.