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Description
This image shows a box-making machine at General Paper & Box Manufacturing Company at Treforest Trading Estate, 1941.
About General Paper and Box Manufacturing Company (GP&B).
The GP&B was set up in 1938 by Paul Schoenmann, a prolific businessman, who had owned a cigarette paper factory in Vienna but after the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938), the Nazis confiscated all Jewish businesses in Austria.
The company specialised in two areas: luxury cardboard boxes and cigarette paper. The boxes were assembled by hand in the factory. During the war, it also made tools for the Ministry of Defence.
Rizla bought the company in 1948 and Paul was forced out in 1951. He subsequently started a furniture company in Bridgend.
Sources.
- Jewish History Association of South Wales/Cymdeithas Hanes Iddewig De Cymru, Oral history interview with George Schoenmann (20 September 2018)
- ‘End of an era for Rizla factory’, in WalesOnline [accessed 11 May 2022].
Depository: George Schoenmann’s private collection.
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