Welcome to HB Bearings

Celebrating 50 years of Bespoke Bearing Manufacture
An open letter from Graham Hirst - Managing Director

2022 marks the 50th year of the founding of HB Bearings. In 1972 my father, the late Norman Hirst, who sadly passed away in September 2021, set up the company which started in a small garage in Huddersfield. Through the years as we grew the business, we moved several times to bigger premises and have now been established here in Honley for 43 years.

Over the last 50 years we have gone from strength to strength, broadening our product range and developing a global customer base to become a major force in the bespoke bearing manufacturing industry.

We feel our strong customer base is mainly contributed to our investment in state-of-the-art machinery along with a highly skilled work force and a commitment to quality.

Sadly, although Norman is not here to celebrate this milestone, he would be so proud, like myself, of our achievements and HB’s fantastic team. He was fortunate to be able to see the recent expansion of HB Bearings with the acquisition of Gamet Bearings in 2019. I plan to uphold our commitment to excellence for many years to come –

Here’s to the next 50 years!

Graham Hirst

Brief History

Back in 1972 our late chairman Norman Hirst had the initiative to manufacture and modify bearings in low volume. The timing was perfect as major manufacturers continued to reduce and amalgamate their product ranges, and sadly some went out of business altogether. It became difficult to obtain many types of bearing. There is still today a lot of specialised machinery in use which requires a source for these types of bearings. HB Bearings stock many types of “difficult to source” metric and imperial bearings of their own manufacture.