Men Of Steel: Memories Of Mackies (Part 2)

Unlike many firms, Mackies prospered in the austere post war years, and ex-employees from West Belfast and further afield explain how this was achieved.

The programme also documents the Mackie ‘boom’ years of the Fifties and Sixties, when the company led the world in textile machine production.

James Mackie & Sons was a textile machinery engineering plant and foundry. The company closed in 1999. At its height, James Mackie & Sons was one of the largest employers in Belfast. The company was founded in the 19th Century and was still owned and run by the Mackie family until the early 1970s, at which time the family gave the company to its employees to be run as a workers co-operative.

In 1955 the company built a factory in India for the manufacture of machinery for jute mills. This was taken over by the Government of India in 1978. Through various changes it still exists as Lagan Engineering Company Ltd, a joint venture with the Government of India.