LEC Refrigeration, known by its full title as Longford Engineering Company Refrigeration, is a British company manufacturing refrigerators and freezers.
History
It was formed in 1942, by fishmongers Frank Purley and his brother Charles Reginald Purley (born 1910 in Twickenham) as Longford Engineering Company Ltd. Charles had moved to Bognor in 1929. It began making munitions for the war on Longford Road in Bognor, but began making experimental refrigerators from 1945. It made its first fridge in 1946, the year the Shripney Road site was obtained, with production beginning in 1947. Charles Purley was the company's chairman until October 1991, shortly before his death in December 1991.
The name was changed to LEC Refrigeration on 13 December 1954. Around 60% of its products were for the domestic market, with the rest for commercial use. Before 1956, it was selling more products abroad than in the United Kingdom. It was based at the Shripney Works, a fourteen-acre site at Bersted in the north of Bognor Regis in Sussex, off Shripney Road (A29) next to the Bognor Regis branch line. On the other side of the railway, it had 56 acres of land, part of which was used to build an airfield, LEC Airfield, from which the company could fly to visit overseas buyers and factories.
By 1960, only 13% of homes in the United Kingdom had a refrigerator, compared to 96% in the United States. Around that time Lec produced its Twelve Six range of fridges, costing £179 each. In 1970, the Co Op (Co-operative Wholesale Society) decided to produce its own range of freezers, manufactured by Lec, which retailed at £93. In 1973, it opened a factory in Northern Ireland. In the 1970s, its freezers were the Which?