It has been a familiar name to smokers for decades, but the future of troubled Crawley-based firm Ronson is looking bleak.

Managers have announced the company, which began manufacturing lighters back in 1896 when Queen Victoria was on the throne, is winding up as a result of difficult trading conditions and a lack of cash for investment.

The Crawley warehouse and head office on the Lowfield Heath Industrial Estate, in the Gatwick flight path, were set up in the mid-Nineties and employ about 30 people.

The future of these jobs and the company itself remains unclear, although two significant but so far unnamed international companies are being viewed as potential saviours.

Smokers around the world have relished the feel and reliability of a Ronson lighter, a brand name which ruled the smoking industry for decades.

The flagship lighter was the gun-metal Varaflame which was first made in the Fifties, when it was cool to smoke as Britain emerged from post-war austerity.

Everyone did it. Film stars, pop stars, radio stars and television stars. Pregnant women, teachers, doctors and professors.

The anti-smoking lobby was unheard of and you couldn't breathe in pubs and restaurants for clouds of foul, thick-smelling smoke.

Male smoking was encouraged by women who felt it made their men more manly. It added gravel to the voice and acted as a handy expectorant.

Although tobacco sponsorship was still a long way off, Ronson cornered the market and their brand was a worldwide success.

When a film star like James Dean flipped his lighter out and lit up, grown women swooned at the sheer masculinity of it all.

The firm was once owned by late Remington shaving king Victor Kiam, who was so impressed - as the slogan went - he bought the company.

But the Ronson group has now given up trying to rekindle the flickering flame of its business which once was a licence to print money.

It diversified into disposable lighters and related products such as flints, lighter fuels and pipe cleaners and the firm once put the world market for disposables at more than £2.5 billion. But all that has changed.

Pamela Hulme, Ronson International's group finance director, is putting a brave face on the latest news.

She said: "The company has been subject to a number of letters of intention and they are now being explored."

Ms Hulme said the firm had been beaten down by difficult conditions in its markets and bothered by lack of cash, which had hindered investment and growth.

The company will now delist itself from the London Stock Exchange, sell its main trading subsidiary and wind-up the holding group, Ronson Plc.

Recent figures show its underlying business had grown about 25 per cent year-on-year for the last three years.

But margins it achieved have not been significant compared with the costs of being a listed company.

Ms Hulme is blaming European Commission proposals to impose tax on smoking accoutrements which could have affected business.

She said: "That would obviously present challenges in terms of increased costs."

The cheapness and availability of disposable lighters in every car boot sale - ten for a £1 is the going rate - did not help.

A statement issued yesterday said the group's board had decided unanimously to delist from the stock exchange, sell its main trading subsidiary Ronson International Ltd (RIL) and wind up the company following the sale.

The statement said: "The company's ultimate ability to raise additional capital from the markets in support of a growth strategy is not a realistic proposition."

The group said it would distribute the net proceeds of the disposal of RIL to shareholders after the winding-up process.

Monday June 16, 2003