I'm delighted to share a new film about Kaymet, a fine tray and trolley maker based in Peckham. Who would have thought that a drinks tray factory is still active in London? Indeed, it's perhaps the world's most important tray and trolley maker.
It wasn't always a traymaker. Kaymet grew out of a radio shop, evolving into a sheet metal firm that specialised in radio chassis. Then during World War II, they became a key supplier of radar casings. After the war, in search of new markets, they got into the fine tray and trolley game — which they continue to dominate today.
A cursory glance at their list of stockists reveals that Kaymet is everywhere — Austria, Colombia, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, Ghana, Hong Kong, the Ivory Coast, Lebanon, Nigeria, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Senegal — and much more. Kaymet is everywhere.
How did such a small niche product designer and manufacturer in such a specific category become the world leader? To find out, I visited the factory and interviewed Mark Brearley, the proprietor of Kaymet, who also happens to be the co-author of a book called Made in London.
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A Conversation with Mark Brearley, Kaymet’s proprietor
Who are you, and what is Kaymet?
I’m Mark Brearley and I am proprietor of Kaymet. We are a small producer of anodised aluminium serving trays and trolleys and, on the side, some electric table hotplates. We’ve been doing that since 1947 in the part of London we’re in now, in Peckham. Not always exactly there, but we’ve moved around in this bit of London ever since 1947, and actually ever since the earlier origins of the business before it became Kaymet.
Can you tell us about the history of Kaymet before you came to it?
It’s a pretty classic story of city-generated startup. Happened to be an immigrant family, late-19th-century immigrant family like so many in London, and they ended up running some shops. One of them was a radio shop. They started doing a bit of manufacture of radio chassis, as we understand it, and that evolved into a small engineering sheet-metal-working business that picked up orders. Started in the basement of the radio shop, and then they took on some premises that were an old dye works, fabric printing, something like that, in Kennington Lane. Took on that factory space.
And during the Second World War, they flourished on the back of orders for military use: radars and radar casings and chassis. And then, like so many businesses after the war, they had to come up with what to do next with their capabilities and decided — surprise, surprise — homewares, booming world then. And stuck with aluminium and anodised aluminium, which again was pretty great for the moment because there was a world glut of aluminium and aluminium technology had advanced dramatically during the Second World War. And in contrast, there were problems with steel, etc., and plastics weren’t as advanced as they now are, and it doesn’t go rusty, and, oh, it’s lightweight. So it was still by the 1940s a wonder product. So they were pushing in a good direction. Indeed, there were several other — even in the UK, several other manufacturers of quite similar products popped up around that same era.
And they started making actually spun ware, which we don’t do anymore — like spun hollowware, salad bowls and things that are produced on a spinning lathe. Bins or wine coolers. So doing a lot of spun ware, and then simultaneous with that they started producing trays, fabricated trays, and then not long after started doing trolleys. And it’s some of those classic designs that have stood the test of time and that we still make.
Can you tell us the story of how you came to be the proprietor of Kaymet?
I used to have a “proper job” and I actually worked for the Mayor in London. I was doing urbanism and running a team. We got quite involved in discussions around industrial land in London. We were on the side of “we shouldn’t be wiping it all out” as London grows. So, I was visiting a lot of industrial areas and was most curious about the manufacturing. It’s the most interesting bit of industry. It’s all very interesting how logistics works and how people with vans who go out and repair things work, but it’s just not quite as massively interesting as people making things. I think probably most people feel that way. When you walk around an industrial area and you realize in one shed somebody’s manufacturing something and you figure out what it is, it’s pretty fascinating.
I got curious and went back to City Hall to ask the people who know for the list of who manufactures in London. Of course, nobody knows. Nobody cares, even. I found that frustrating and thought I’d do it myself. I started researching and making a list and spent quite a few years doing that as a hobby. One of the things along the way was trying to persuade my wife that it wasn’t bonkers, so I decided to buy her some things as a birthday present. I’d spotted this logo on the way into work because I got the train that goes on the viaduct going into London Bridge. There was a shed with the Kaymet logo on the end and because I’d been doing this research I was eagle-eyed. I looked them up and that was one of the things we bought. We went to the factory and bought a couple of trays for the present. The proprietor got in touch with me a few months later and said, “Unfortunately, I’m liquidating the business. Have you got any ideas about who might want to take it on — any of what’s left?” That was how I came across it.
We decided quite quickly that we would take it on in collaboration with that ex-proprietor, Ken Schreiber. He still works for us. We knew nothing about it and set about rescuing the business, buying new machines — we lost a lot of machines in that process of liquidation. We had to set it up again, take on the building, and start the hunt for a new building because we didn’t want to get evicted, which was on the cards because they wanted to redevelop where we were. They were an “evil-ish” landlord/developer. So, we wanted to find a building and started those step-by-step with, “Oh yeah, I suppose we need a business strategy.” It’s got to be sell more bloody trays because otherwise, obviously, we haven’t got a business. Obviously, it’ll carry on haemorrhaging money like it was. That was the business strategy. We got busy repositioning it, making it more visible, and trying to sell more. It was only then later that I started to get my head around production and trying to improve that.
Talk me through the manufacturing process.
We’ve got it fairly small. Sometimes it feels like working in a submarine. In fact, workshop factory space: 4,000 square foot. And there we do most of the metalwork. All of the assembly. Some key processes are sent out, especially anodising. We assemble mostly to order — as the orders come — because we have this very big range of sizes and finish options, and we’re tiny, and we ain’t got loads of space for stock, and we’re not super rich.
So though we produce plenty decent quantities, it’s not mass production in that sense. And it really makes a virtue of the fact that we’re pretty handmade, pretty craft-focused. And that of course is an advantage if you’re chopping and changing and making different versions for different orders — even making bespoke variants, which we do quite a bit of.
Lots of people dislike people calling things produced in mass “craft”. Would you call this craft?
Sure. Sort of craft metalwork, which you will also interestingly find in places such as BAE Systems or big aerospace and precision-engineering places or toolmaking. They all have these very high-craft components. There’s an awful lot of craft in metalwork, and we’re at the small end, we’re at the workshop end, but absolutely it’s craft-based. Let’s define craft as workmanship of risk. There’s a lot of risk involved. It can all go wrong. It needs hand-eye judgment.
Tell me more about that definition. Where does it come from?
Ah, David Pye is worth looking at. He was this extraordinary — he spent a lot of his time making these carved wooden bowls. He was a kind of trained craftsman. He made these big hand-machines for carving these giant bowls. But he also wrote about craft, and it’s in one of his books that he gets to this idea that it’s about what he calls “workmanship of risk” as a kind of working definition. It’s well worth reading.
Could you grow a lot bigger and still be considered in that definition?
Yes, I think so. You could more mechanise and automate some of what we do, and I wouldn’t say we desperately never want to do that. But it would still have a lot of judgment-based, risk-based work. I think it’s just in the nature of what we produce. I think you’d have to make a very different design of products to make them more push-a-button friendly. They’re not those kind of products. They’re quite special, the outcome of, I suppose, a different era when they were conceived.
All our designs are from the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s. We’ve evolved them since. We still feel they’re very much our designs. They’re alive. They’re not frozen in time. But the origins of them, the principles behind them are by now historic. And you wouldn’t necessarily come up with the same method of making if you were trying to tune it to be super-efficient and push-a-button friendly. So that means we’re in a place where you play to your strengths. And one of those is that we can vary them. We can do different finishes. It’s very small batches. We can make one of a particular finish and size if that’s what people want.
Why don’t they have named designers?
It’s just the accident of history. I guess they’re part of a different tradition where designs evolved from a company and the draftsman helped out and everyone figured it out together and you didn’t buy in a designer. And of course, if you did, they weren’t going to be named. That was a kind of ‘50s and ‘60s thing where designers started to push for getting the right credit for what they were doing and it became a standalone business. We’re in a way from an earlier tradition. It’s more organic and vernacular from the business, and there’s a lot to enjoy about that. And one of the consequences of that is that we feel we have licence — we are still part of a living evolution of the design.
The designs have evolved over the decades, especially slightly more complex products, the trolleys. They’ve evolved in some quite big jumps: the way that they’re made, the way the design is configured. And there were a lot of other products that Kaymet made. Some of them are terrible, terrible designs. So you look through the old workbooks that we’ve got and you think, “Oh my God, did we really make that?” So there’s a kind of Darwinian evolution; the ones we make now are the ones that are pretty good, pretty simple, nice designs that you keep working on.
And by “we,” you mean everyone involved who’s working?
Everyone involved here. We got one of the most skilled metalworker who’s been with the business many years. Our general manager, who is the son of the founder. He has a lot of understanding and knowledge and memory of the products and is a good sounding board for practicality and producibility. And then me and my wife, who’s part of the business — we discuss and get a second opinion and she comes up with things. So it’s that kind of collaborative process, and then sometimes working with designers and producers of elements to refine the design. So we’re currently working on a new handle, and that is a collaboration with some young designers. And then in that same little conversation with Ron in production and Ken, general manager, in the office, and figuring out what we think can work, discussion with the producers and all that.
Is that a Supreme tray?
This one was done as a collaboration with Supreme, who approached us. They do these extremely wonderful other products as limited-edition drops; amazing things. We were really excited when they approached us. This, I think probably the Trump tariffs killed, because lots of things didn’t happen at the same time. Maybe it’ll come back! We made it, and then they said we’ve pulled the plug on lots of collaborations this year, and we assumed it was immediately after the Trump tariffs happened and it was all confusion.
You’ve also written a book called Made in London: From Workshops to Factories (2022) with Carmel King and Clare Dowdy. What is it about London and manufacturing that is so fascinating to you?
I am really interested in cities. It’s been a big part of my life and career. I have a belief in — the phrase I would use is “a good city has everything,” and another phrase would be “a good city has industry as part of the everything.”
I do think it’s important that cities are able to welcome a diverse economy. I always see it as positive and enjoy it when I see extraversion and visibility to that diverse economic range in a city, including manufacturing. When you see people making things, you think, “Wow, this is positive.” It’s only afterwards that you try and figure out why you think it’s positive. The first thing is a sort of gut feeling. Then you think, “Oh, it’s positive because it’s good if everyone, including school kids, can see everything that people do in life when they’re growing up or when they’re passing by on their way to work.”
It’s good that people understand where stuff comes from. Then you get into more straightforward economic arguments. It’s better for resilience if you have a very diverse economy. It’s better for everyone in society if there’s the kind of jobs that suit some people who prefer those kinds of jobs — they’re more practical or they’re less wordy, whatever. It’s good to have an economy that provides a rich diversity of employment types. I personally think that we have lost touch with how things are made.
Why is it so important that we see and understand?
I think I would position it as part of a wider question. If you hide away your criminal justice system — like if you move all the courthouses to the edge of town next to a motorway junction and you hide away all the prisons in forests because you think they’re ugly and a bit scary, and you never see a policeman — that’s society-problematic because we all kind of buy into the criminal justice system. It should be visible. You should be able to see the process happening.
Ditto everything to do with healthcare and hospitals. If you hide away when people are ill and separate it from society, something feels really, really wrong about that. Segregation doesn’t feel like it creates a good society. I don’t think it’s a good thing to completely segregate away and make invisible to the generality of people how logistics happens. Is it disturbing that most people never see a ship and don’t understand that people are relying for everything they have on ships? It’s a massive industry, and yet it’s almost invisible. There’s a little bit of a class thing going on: “Oh, all that dirty working stuff, we don’t want to see it, thanks.” I just think it all should be visible.
Making is a fundamental thing. Not everyone needs to make things, but it’s something that a very large proportion of people gain something from and have an aptitude for. It’s really good when that’s present and preferably not “nichified” to an extreme, which is the danger — it becomes a kind of niche hobby activity that gravitates towards the more prosperous people. The whole “craft” thing has a disturbing side. You’re pedalling to try and avoid that — no, this is mainstream and there’s craft in everything.
I’m in a conversation about an exhibition about craft in industry. One of the things mentioned by the curator in our discussion was Airbus. The Airbus people said, “You should understand that this is craft activity. Most of what we do making aeroplanes is a craft-based thing.” Even a company like that understands that actually what they do is small-batch. A lot of it is super high-tech and automated, but at its heart, much of it is a craft operation. Reminding people that craft and the relationship between a human brain and making things is a mainstream part of huge ranges of production that we rely on is important. It’s not just people gaining great satisfaction from doing some ceramics in their evening classes.
Why is making in Britain important to British identity?
Well, you don’t want to get lured into an exceptionalism trajectory. The UK is not exceptional in the world. Nevertheless, it is a country that has particularly strongly embedded making because of its early move into being industrial and its one-time dominance in global manufacturing.
A city like London probably was the largest manufacturing city in the world at one time, and even then, people were not really aware of it because it was so diverse and “un-grim.” Places that were more famous were doing textiles or steel — much more spectacular and singular. London was always secondary, doing thousands of different things. But it was colossal — it had thousands of garment factories, for example.
A lot has survived. A lot of new has built on what’s in the earth, the collective memory, and the residues of skills that can be revived before they die. It is frustrating that the UK has been a bit weak on it. You compare it with France, which has equivalent histories, and yet in the more niche and craft-based sectors, they’ve done much better.
They have luxury houses like LVMH and Richemont that have really managed to nurture, invest in, and push forward some of these high-end, craft-based businesses. In the UK, we haven’t really had the same push. It’s surprising that the government does an industrial strategy and there’s no mention of luxury craft. It’s all about super-tech stuff, advanced manufacturing, and biomed.
Those are brilliant, but it’s surprising that this other obvious chunk of strength is not really being pushed. We don’t have big champions like LVMH who are able to say, “Okay, we’ll build a brand new factory here and train leather workers, or buy that tannery because we need the leather.” They’re supporting the whole ecology. We haven’t really got those champions here. The capabilities and businesses are there, but it’s not being pushed.
Thank you very much for taking the time to chat to us Mark. Shall we go and have some pie at Manze’s?
