Anthony Innovations is celebrating its 70th Anniversary in 2021. Sil Anthony started this local Australian third-generation, family-owned manufacturing business in an engineering workshop in a corrugated iron shed on Bell Street, Preston, Melbourne, in 1951.
Initially known as Anthony Bearings, the company grew rapidly thanks to a process Sil Anthony developed, producing custom, short run bearings for use in industrial conveyor rollers, as well as large sliding doors and windows.
From there, the 1970s and 1980s were a time of growth for the company as the country prospered, the demand for bearings grew and the company's internal capabilities expanded to meet the needs of a widening customer base. But as the 1990s arrived with a mixture of recession, deregulation and globalisation, many of those customers started closing their doors and the business was faced with the challenge many Australian manufacturers struggled with at the time: evolve or die.
Sil Anthony's son Phil—following in his father's footsteps as managing director—refocused the company's operations to meet the needs of this changing environment. As the new millennium began, Anthony Bearings evolved into Anthony Innovations, stepping back from making bearings for industrial applications and focusing more on the manufacture of rollers for sliding doors and windows.
This evolution saw the company broadening its knowledge base, investing more into local Australian engineering and design skills to develop more advanced products and materials, while establishing relationships with overseas manufacturing to develop a more competitive supply chain.
At the same time, the Anthony Innovations team also looked overseas toward new markets for their products in North America and Europe while shoring up their existing domestic markets with their new product range for the doors and windows industry.
In 2009, the company set up Anthony Innovations Changzhou, an Australian business located in China that runs as a highly mechanized factory
Anthony Innovations has now become a multinational company across Australia, North America and Asia and the leadership mantle is being passed down on to the third generation of Anthonys in Ben and his brother Drew.
