IT’S a familiar feature in many hotel rooms – the famous Corby trouser press.

Now a Huddersfield company has taken over the Corby business in an £800,000 deal.

Fired Up Group, based at the former bus depot on St Thomas’ Road, Longroyd Bridge, said buying John Corby Ltd would help open the door to selling Fired Up’s existing products to the hotels and hospitality sector.

Fired up managing director Richard Kaye said: “Corby is a highly respected brand and caters to a market we want to enter.

“Corby is widely known for its trouser press, but it also makes and distributes a range of products from kettles and hair driers to ironing equipment and shower fittings – everything you find in the hotel bedroom.

“We manufacture wood-based products, including fitted bedroom furniture, which fit well with Corby’s hotel amenity products.”

Corby, which has a factory at Peterlee, Co Durham, and headquarters in Andover, Kent, was sold by parent Jourden plc.

Corby achieved turnover totalling £3.5m in 2008 – with exports accounting for 50% of sales. Corby has customers in 50 countries.

Mr Kaye said Corby’s products would be added to the Fired Up range, which also includes fires and fireplaces, radiators and wine coolers sold through retailers such as B&Q, Argos, Home base and Littlewoods.

Fired Up Group has a turnover exceeding £10m. It employs 60 people at its 110,000sq ft premises at Longroyd bridge and a further 200 people at a factory in Zhon Shan, China.

Mr Kaye said: “We have the manufacturing capacity and supply chain, but until this acquisition we didn’t have the recognised brand to open doors into the hotels and hospitality sector.

“The day I completed the takeover, Corby had won a new contract for a hotel development in Saudi Arabia, which indicates the potential for the business.

“One of my first jobs will be to visit Corby’s distributors overseas to promote the Fired Up product range.”

Mr Kaye said the enlarged company was targeting export markets, but said it also hoped to exploit opportunities closer to home.

“The UK economy is clearly struggling at he moment,” he said.

“But by 2010 we expect to see a programme of hotel building and refurbishment in the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics and that will present us with some good opportunities.

John Corby Ltd was formed in 1930 in Windsor as a manufacturer of valet stands before developing the well-known trouser press.

The electrically-heated trouser press was introduced in the 1960s before becoming part of Jourden plc in 1977.