Philips Electrical sets up Australian HQ in 1950s at former World War II munitions factory in Adelaide's Hendon
The radio section of Philips Electrical Industries complex at the Adelaide western suburb of Hendon from the late 1940s and, inset, the bullet and case shop from the site's previous use as a World War II munitions factory.
Images courtesy Weekend Notes and Adelaide Remembers When
Philips Electrical Industries set up its Australian headquarters, as the country's largest producer of electronic components and a major centre of technological skills and research, at the northwest Adelaide suburb of Hendon from 1947.
Philips, lured from Sydney by premier Thomas Playford’s government, bought the buildings used by a World War II munitions factory. After moving into Hendon in 1947, Phillips employed about 1,000 workers, principally making electronic valves.
The first expansion came in 1949, when buildings were added to make the newly-invented transistor. In 1954-55, the plant nearly doubled to make television sets from components to complete units on site, and the workforce rose to more than 2,000, mostly women.
In 1970, Philips took over the new factory of Electrical Industries Ltd at Clayton, Victoria, and began to transfer its television manufacturing there. Philips continued to make components at Hendon but gradually wound down its operations and sold the land in 1980 to the Emanuel Group of Companies, as Hendon industrial park. Tenants at the site included the South Australian Film Corporation Hendon Studios from 1981 until its move to new studios at Glenside in 2011.
The new suburb of Hendon had been laid out in 1921 by Wilkinson, Sands and Wyles, on part of the land previously owned and used by the aviator Harry Butler as an aerodrome from 1920. “Hendon” or “Captain Butler's” aerodrome" was bought in 1922 by the defence department’s civil aviation branch as the first Adelaide airport. By 1927, encroaching development saw aviation moved to Parafield in Adelaide's north.
The Australian government originally intended to fund Parafield Aerodrome by the subdividing Hendon but this lapsed when the 1920s economic boom ended. With World War II, the still-vacant site was one of three (others at Finsbury and Salisbury) used for munitions factories. The Hendon factory, making small arms ammunition, was serviced by a railway station on a spur of the Grange line.
