Magnadata Group

Dapag had been formed in 1943. It made machines for printing tickets, labels and tags. It was based at Plumtree Court in EC4 in London, near where the A40 and A201 meet at Holborn Viaduct. It employed around 170 staff.

Norcros was founded on 29 May 1956. Dapag was part of Norcros. The name Norcros comes from Normanby, North Lincolnshire, home of Normanby Hall. A Director of the company was John Vincent Sheffield, former High Sheriff of Lincolnshire from 1944-5, and great-uncle of the wife of David Cameron. Other members of the Sheffield family - Edmund and George - were directors.

Norprint International was based on Norfolk Street in Boston. It had a division on Valley Road in Dovercourt on the Essex coast with 550 staff. Norprint also made ticket printing machines. Norprint claimed to be Europe's largest producer of industrial and retail labelling systems, and the largest in the world outside of America.

In early 1968 it helped to start the I'm Backing Britain campaign, by running off the promotional stickers for free. Before the days of barcodes in supermarkets, Norprint made hand-held price labellers, used by the main supermarkets; these were made in Harwich.

In April 1989 it received a Queen's Award for Technological Achievement for its magnetic striped and encoded tickets and payment tokens.

Norprint produced tickets for airlines and the London Underground. It was owned by Norcros plc.

On 25 June 1998 Norcros put Norprint up for sale. In July 1998 Norprint was bought by a management buyout (MBO) for £13.7 million. After the buyout it was known as Norprint Labelling Systems.

In 2005 it developed the Nortag, a small inconspicuous RFID label on products to combat shoplifting, which won The Queen's Award for Enterprise: Innovation (Technology) in April 2005.[1] It is known as electronic article surveillance (EAS). The Nortag took seven years to develop.

Customers include the New York Metro, Dublin Bus, Valencia Metro (Metrovalencia), Sydney Rail and London Underground.

On 7 December 2000, Magnadata was visited by Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, in his capacity as Vice-Chairman of British Trade International, being accompanied by Bridget Cracroft-Eley.

In February 2006 Magnadata, also based in Boston, bought Norprint.[2] Norprint had around 220 staff and Magnadata had around 200.

In 1987 Magnadata was the first company to produce magnetic strip tickets for British Rail. For this it received the Queen’s Award for Technology in 1989; it was the first printing company to receive this award.

In August 2010 it was awarded the £24 million contract to produce the magnetic strip tickets for train tickets in the UK for the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC). This is for around 750 million tickets a year at over 2500 railway stations.[3]

Magnadata USA is based in Toms River, New Jersey.

In May 2002 it bought Spectron Transit Tickets Pty Ltd, of Australia, which is now Magnadata Pty, based in St Marys, New South Wales.

Norprint is a subsidiary of Magnadata. It has thirty printing presses running 24 hours a day at the site in Boston, and claims to be the largest printing facility in the UK. It produces over 10 billion labels per year. Norprint claims to be the UK's largest distributor and reseller of thermal transfer ribbons for printers.