About

Arnos Australia Pty Ltd is a family owned company, founded by the late Bill Martin in 1943 as Arnos Supplies, and is now managed by his son-in-law, Roger Henry.

Manufacturing operations commenced in 1944, making map pins for the US Army. At this time, Bill Martin also purchased the Swallow Needle Mfg. Co for its’ facility to mould the heads for the map pins. The acquisition of Swallow brought with it the capacity to manufacture hand knitting needles.

Arnos next commenced the manufacture of the now famous No.3 Long Prong Paper Fastener from cannery off cuts of tin plate. Visits to the cannery to collect scrap exposed their need for wire formed meat can keys, which Arnos began to manufacture.

ARNOS invested heavily in new tooling for the manufacture of CARDEX Visible Record card file systems. More space was required and in July 1944 they established their Metal Stamping operations in an old Blacksmith’s premises at the Corner Point Nepean & Park Roads in the more distant suburb of Cheltenham.

The headquarters and manufacturing base for ARNOS AUSTRALIA PTY LTD has been located at their present Nepean Highway sites in Cheltenham for over 60 years

As the CARDEX business grew bigger and bigger the company acquired more and more of the adjoining properties and extended the factory areas.

During the year of the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games ARNOS obtained its first export orders to Singapore and changed its name to ARNOS Melbourne Pty Ltd. They bought more adjoining properties and in 1961 built a new state-of-the-art warehouse facility in Park Road.

Further growth and the need for more storage space was satisfied by the purchase and development of the old Squash Courts building at 1234 Nepean Highway in 1966.

Eventually these CARDEX products were sold into 44 countries worldwide and the Australian Government recognized ARNOS with two national export awards for outstanding achievement in the field of export in 1974 and again 1979.

Cardex sales peaked in 1998 and represented 90% of the company’s turnover. ARNOS was by then employing over 100 persons and received the Victorian Governor’s Export Award in 1989. However from that time on the personal computer became a reality and Cardex sales declined rapidly. 

The company by 1989 had sales offices in Birmingham UK and Ottawa Canada and was renamed ARNOS AUSTRALIA PTY. LTD.

New emphasis was placed on promoting Hang-A Plan filing systems and patented Flippa display panel systems to overcome the turnover lost on Cardex products.

Production of Cardex cabinets eventually ceased at the end of 1999 by which time export markets had been firmly established for the newer products. ARNOS was well into re-engineering for the new manufacturing processes and required new plant and equipment, new tooling and new expertise to run the factory.

ARNOS Hang-A-Plan became the market leader for plan file systems in the UK and Flippa Display Panel Systems became a market leader in Australia.

The re-engineering of the manufacturing processes at ARNOS has continued to evolve with the introduction of new products and new patents for plastic paper fasteners and desktop organizers and also for a completely new revolutionary range of Hang-A-Plan products.

Today Arnos continues to innovate, develop and manufacture quality office products for distribution within Australia and world markets.