Kapp & Peterson's Move to a New Factory (2022)

Kapp & Peterson's move to a new factory refers to Ireland's most established pipe workshop leaving the production building it had used for fifty years. Effective 23 May 2022, the Sallynoggin facility in County Dublin was closed, and production began being carried on in the same general area, in a new building in the neighboring district of Deansgrange. The Peterson brand thus moved to only its third production address in its entire history.

Address History

The workshop's first location was St. Stephen's Green in central Dublin. According to the record, the building was vacated in 1972 and production moved to Sallynoggin; the Irish press's account also holds that the workshop left the city center in the 1970s. The 2022 move is therefore only the brand's second relocation.

The fifty years spent at Sallynoggin correspond to the period in which the workshop placed greater emphasis on limited collector-oriented series rather than mass production. Series built on island identity such as Erin Go Bragh, and commemorative collections such as Mark Twain, took shape in this building.

Background to the Decision

According to the company's public account, the decision to relocate rested on practical rather than sentimental grounds. It is reported that a four-year lease was signed for the building after Kapp & Peterson passed to the US-based Laudisi Enterprises in 2018, and that needs were reassessed once that term ended; this detail rests solely on the company's announcement and is not confirmed in independent records. The two shortcomings that stood out were insufficient space for production and storage, and infrastructure in need of renewal. According to the same announcement, the building's electrical system had reached the limit of its capacity, and adding new equipment to the workshop was no longer possible without a comprehensive overhaul.

The Setup at Deansgrange

The move was planned to disrupt production as little as possible. Lathes, hand tools, and raw briar stock were moved to the new building within three days with the participation of the staff; the workshop left Sallynoggin on a Wednesday and returned to production in Deansgrange the following Monday.

The most notable change the new building brought was the ability to reorganize the workflow by function group. The lathes handling drilling work — bowl, mortise, and mouthpiece drilling — were gathered on a single line. Having makers doing similar work side by side is considered an arrangement that makes both monitoring production and the exchange of knowledge between benches easier. The facility also has open space allowing for future expansion of production and storage capacity.

Although from the outside it may look like nothing more than an address change, the event is considered a marker of continuity for Irish pipe production: the country's oldest and largest-scale pipe workshop has kept its production going without interruption.