 As the north-west's cotton industry experienced a severe decline during the recession of the 1930s, Platt Brothers, Howard and Bullough, Brooks and Doxey, Asa Lees, Dobson and Barlow, Joseph Hibbert, John Hetherington and Tweedales and Smalley merged to become Textile Machinery Makers Ltd. Taylor, Lang & Co. was the largest company outside this group, but was acquired in 1936.The individual units continued to trade under their own names until the 1970, when they were rationalised into one company called Platt UK Ltd.In 1991 the company name changed to Platt Saco Lowell.