APV was founded by Dr Richard Seligman in 1910 as the Aluminium Plant & Vessel Company Limited, a specialist fabricating firm supplying welded vessels to the brewery and vegetable oil trades. Over the years the company grew through many acquisitions and expanded from a total staff of seven to an international engineering business with a workforce of more than 2,750.

Carefully planned growth over the years brought new process plant and automation technologies for the dairy, food, brewery, beverage, phamaceutical and healthcare industries. Through acquisition, APV was able to exploit and develop the knowledge and expertise of companies such as Gaulin and Rannie; experts in homogenisation technology.

APV was itself taken over in June 1997 by Siebe plc. Founded in London in 1819 by Augustus Siebe, an immigrant Austrian artillery officer, Siebe developed, through organic growth and acquisition into one of the United Kingdom’s largest diversified engineering companies.

In February 1999, Siebe merged with BTR plc, also a major international industrial manufacturing and engineering company, to form Invensys plc a global leader in the Automation and Controls industry.

APV was acquired by the SPX Corporation on 31 December 2007. SPX Corporation is a Fortune 500 multi-industry manufacturing leader that provides its customers with highly-specialized, engineered solutions to solve critical business issues.

The APV brand is part of SPX FLOW Inc. SPX FLOW designs, manufactures and markets engineered solutions and products used to process, blend, meter and transport fluids in addition to air and gas filtration and dehydration. Recognized for its leading brands and turnkey systems capability, SPX FLOW has global operations which serve the Food & Beverage, Power & Energy and Industrial markets.