Brass sign, F.W Ashton & Co.

This sign was displayed on the F W Ashton factory in Hyde, Manchester.

ABC Wax was first established as F W Ashton when brothers Benjamin and Joseph Ashton purchased land at Newton Bank to establish a calico printing firm in 1812. The company traded under this name until 1970.

In the early days of the business, F W Ashton was a calico printing company. It started specialising in wax prints in 1908. In 1899, F W Ashton was one of the 46 companies which formed the Calico Printers Association (CPA). In 1959, the CPA purchased a Swiss trading company called A Brunnschweiler & Co and in 1970, F W Ashton began trading under this name. During the 1980s the company became widely known as ABC and ABC Wax became its brand name. Production at the ABC Wax factory in Hyde finally concluded in 2007, by which time all production had been transferred to its sister company Akosombo Textiles Ltd in Ghana. ABC Wax has been part of the Hong Kong-based Cha Group since 1992. A design and administration office had been retained in Hyde but is now closed.

In the early 2000s the Cha group claimed to have a printing and finishing capacity of 213 million meters of fabric, to employ approximately 18,000 people in the textile industry and have a 60-65% market share of wax prints across the world.