Sign in

Private company

Magnadata Group

Magnadata Group, also known as Magnadata International, was a printing company based in Boston in Lincolnshire, specialising in the development and manufacture of security and access control media including magnetic smart tickets and tags. It was placed into administration in 2015, and was subsequently sold to Paragon Group.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

See how the biggest companies compare on our leaderboards

Magnadata Group, also known as Magnadata International, was a printing company based in Boston in Lincolnshire, specialising in the development and manufacture of security and access control media including magnetic smart tickets and tags. It was placed into administration in 2015, and was subsequently sold to Paragon Group.2

How it started

Norprint

Norcros was founded on 29 May 1956. The name Norcros came from Normanby, North Lincolnshire, home of Normanby Hall. A Director of the company was John Vincent Sheffield, former High Sheriff of Lincolnshire from 1944-5, and great-uncle of the wife of David Cameron. Other members of the Sheffield family—Edmund and George—were directors.

Norprint International was based on Norfolk Street in Boston. It had a division on Valley Road in Dovercourt on the Essex coast with 550 staff. Norprint also made ticket printing machines. Norprint claimed to be Europe's largest producer of industrial and retail labelling systems, and the largest in the world outside of America.

In early 1968 it helped to start the I'm Backing Britain campaign, by running off the promotional stickers for free. Before the days of barcodes in supermarkets, Norprint made hand-held price labellers, used by the main supermarkets; these were made in Harwich.

In April 1989 it received a Queen's Award for Technological Achievement for its magnetic striped and encoded tickets and payment tokens.

Norprint produced tickets for airlines and the London Underground. It was owned by Norcros plc.

From Wikipedia’s article on Magnadata Group, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

  1. 1
  2. 2