Established in 1890 on the Maine Seacoast

The origins of the modern Southworth International Group can be traced to the 1870s in the seaside city of Portland, Maine. The Reverend Francis B. Southworth was the pastor of the Seamen’s Bethel Church on Fore Street in Portland, which provided a church and a place of fellowship for merchant seaman. Keen to provide his flock with a productive way of passing the time while at sea and in foreign ports, Southworth developed and began to produce Bethel library cases. Each of the neat, but inexpensive cases contained a Bible and an assortment of other general reading materials.

Products for the Printing and Graphic Arts Industry

Out of these early activities was born the Southworth Press, a printing press based in Portland. Soon the company began to manufacture a range of products, like the ones shown below, to support their own printing efforts as well as the growing printing and graphics arts industry in the region.

The Transition to General Manufacturing

In 1910, the company was incorporated as the Southworth Machine Company and built a new manufacturing facility, which was to be the first reinforced concrete factory building in Portland. From the outset Southworth has been characterized by a focus on innovation, quality and the provision of intelligent solutions to customer problems. With the onset of World War I, the Company manufactured turret lathes, shell trimming devices, wire winding equipment and other products intended for the war effort.

In 1920, the Company relocated to a modern manufacturing facility on Warren Avenue in Portland, which would remain its headquarters for much of the 20th century. In 1921, the Company added an Automotive Division focused on the manufacture of replacement parts; the rebuilding of engines for trucks, fire apparatus and similar heavy vehicles; and the installation of dump bodies. Later the business expanded into the distribution and rebuilding of marine and aircraft engines and parts manufacture. The Automotive Division rebuilt truck fleets for a range of clients including Gulf Oil, Maine Central Transportation Company, Socony Mobile Co., the Coast Guard and assorted gas and diesel powered trawlers in the Maine fishing fleet.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the Company built fire trucks for towns throughout New England. There are rumored to be two existing Southworth-built fire engines in Kennebunk and Harrison, Maine. In the mid-1930s the Company introduced the Southworth Portable Fire Pump, which could be carried by two men and which was targeted at rural fire departments serving potential fire sites away from good road access.

With the arrival of World War II, the Southworth machine shop was running around the clock, seven days a week to produce aircraft engine and propeller parts, alongside other vital war material. The plant was expanded, new machinery was purchased and production lines were revamped. The Company began contract machining operations for high precision-close tolerance work for several leading aerospace customers. As World War II drew to a close, the Company refocused its efforts on Graphic Arts, Engine Rebuilding, the aerospace industry and the manufacture of equipment for paper and textile manufacturers. During the 1940s and 1950s Southworth Machine Company was the Caterpillar distributor for northern New England. In 1954 the Company launched a major campaign to build up its manufacturing facilities and product lines. There was a particular focus on the paper industry, and the problems inherent in handling paper which led to the formation of Southworth’s Materials Handling and Papermill division. The division introduced flat sheet handling machinery for use in the paper industry. In 1957 the Company introduced its first line of lift tables with a cam style design. In 1960 the Company introduced a line of coil and roll handling machinery and in 1968 a line of dock and facility lifts. Throughout this period Southworth Machine Company designed and built machinery to the exacting standards of a wide range of leading American and international manufacturers.

An Intense Focus on Materials Handling

The late 1970s were a period of considerable transformation. Southworth Machine Company was renamed Southworth, Incorporated, which later became Southworth International Group, Inc. The Company introduced a line of lighter weight, mobile ergonomic products, which form the nucleus of a line of products that the Company continues to produce and sell today. This product line extension proved to be farsighted, as many of the ergonomic concepts that Southworth introduced at that time were well-matched for the 1980s focus on lean manufacturing. In a bit of lean optimization of its own, the Company concurrently pioneered the SWIFT LIFT program to dramatically simplify the process of specifying, ordering and receiving a lift table with minimum lead times. In 1979 the Company opened a new plant in Manila, Arkansas, to better serve its expanding customer base in the Midwest and Southeast.

Domestic and International Growth

In the late 1980s Southworth significantly expanded its global reach with a series of strategic partnerships for product development and sales in Japan, Australia and Europe. These efforts helped fuel growth both domestically and internationally and culminated with the opening of a new sales, engineering and manufacturing facilty in China at the end of the decade.

In the following decades the Southworth International Group looked to build on this growth in sales and market share with an aggressive plan which included both the acquisition of competitors and the forming of new companies including Presto Lifts in 2002, Lift Company of America in 2010, Retail Handling Solutions in 2012 and Equipment Company of America (ECOA) in 2017.

In 2016 the company took a bold step into the European marketplace instantly taking the position of sales and market share leader with the simultaneous acquisitions of Marco Lifts, Hymo Lifts, Jihab and Saxon Lifts.

In the spring of 2019 Southworth International Group reinforced its committment to the APAC region with the opening of new headquarters in Shanghai and a new, state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Wuxi.

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As Southworth approaches its 130th anniversary, momentum to bring innovative solutions to the global arena is at an all-time high.