Ansell history

The company was registered on August 31, 1899, and was listed on the stock exchanges at Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide.

Perdriau quickly opened a retail store to sell the surplus, and in 1904 he took the business public with £40,000 in capital.

Ansell had been founded in Richmond, Australia, in 1905 by a former Dunlop employee, and its first products were balloons and condoms.

It expanded to produce other rubber products, and in 1910 it began to make automobile tires.

1929: Dunlop merges with the Perdriau Rubber Company and adopts the name Dunlop Perdriau Ltd.

After World War II, the company expanded its range of consumer goods in an effort to profit from increased postwar demand; for example, in 1948 Dunlop opened a factory to produce footwear.

Ansell won an export award in 1967 from the Australian Department of Trade and Industry.

Along with Olympic Consolidated Industries came a 50 percent interest in Olex Cables Ltd.; Dunlop Olympic acquired the remaining 50 percent in 1981 for A$56.8 million.

Dunlop Olympic continued to grow when in 1984 it acquired Dunlop New Zealand Ltd. (which manufactured tires, industrial products, and sporting goods) and Olex Canzac Cables, New Zealand's second largest cable manufacturer.

In February 1987, shares of Pacific Dunlop Ltd began to be traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Furthering its diversification program, the company in 1988 purchased Nucleus Ltd. and also Telectronic Holdings Ltd., a manufacturer of such health care products as pacemakers and hearing aids.

In 1989, it acquired the United States battery manufacturers Standard Batteries and Southern Batteries.

In 1990, Pacific Dunlop and Goodyear entered into a second joint venture, forming Tecbelt Pacific to manufacture steel-cord conveyor belting.

By 1992, Dunlop had investments of more than A$400 million throughout the region, and its total exports were A$144 million.

In July 1993, Dunlop purchased the Plumrose food-products business in Australia for A$225 million.

In 1996, the company sold its industrial footwear division, its Telectronics Pacing Systems, and its share of its adidas International joint venture.

A leveraged buyout group purchased the company's Olex Cables division in 1999 for A$300 million.

In 2001, the company posted a loss of A$139.4 million, due in part to the deteriorating value of the Australian dollar, problems in the tire industry related to an influx of low-cost imports, and slow growth in many of its business segments.