BRITISH Buttons, the York-based manufacturer, is under new ownership.

Peter Bownes, managing director and his wife, Helen, have bought the 31-staff factory in Goose Lane on the Green Park industrial estate, Sutton-on-the-Forest. Last year the manufacturer confirmed its status as the biggest of its kind in the UK by producing 130 million buttons.

Mr Bownes, who joined the company in 1993 and became MD two years ago, was represented by solicitors Denison Till of York, which completed the deal with the former owners, brothers Geoff and Howard Green in just two weeks.

Using computerised machinery, British Buttons sells thousands of variations of polyester buttons to garment manufacturers who supply Britain's high street multiples. It also has a huge export market, the latest major order being from suit-makers in India requiring two million buttons.

Mr Bownes, who introduced direct sales, by-passing the "middlemen" merchandisers, said: "No further big investment is required. We are well within our capacity and could produce more with the machinery we have, although we will need more people.

"I can't say too much at the moment, but I am in negotiations with quite a number of people to do things in a slightly different way to achieve improvements in volume and there is a great deal of interest in what we are proposing. Watch this space."

He said there were signs that while the garment industry had moved to the Far East because of cheapness of manufacture, quick-changing fashion in Europe was making it worthwhile for the clothes industry to be closer at hand, avoiding the costs of air freight. "The cheaper it becomes, the better it is for us."

The deal is yet another coup for Denison Till. Practice partner Andrew Lindsay said: "On this occasion we were recommended by Creers chartered accountants of York, but there have been a number of referrals lately from Leeds, proving that on legal issues of acquisition and business sales we have the skills in York to button up deals equal or superior to anywhere else."