A BOLTON-based watch company will expand its reach to Australia, with the British-designed watches now on sale in Oceania for the first time.

Brand agency Keda will be placing Duckworth Prestex watches throughout a number of outlets in Melbourne, the capital of the state of Victoria, which was once known as the richest city in the world following the gold rush.

Although those days are long gone, the interest in fine jewellery and quality watch-making remains, making Melbourne an ideal location for Duckworth Prestex to establish a global presence within the region.

Keda will deal with all the watches currently available in the Duckworth Prestex family, which range from chronographs to automatics, on a variety of straps that also include rubber and Milanese steel mesh.

As a result, the watch-making traditions of Duckworth Prestex born in the town of Bolton nearly 100 years ago will come to a brand new continent as the British brand makes an ambitious move further afield.

However, global horizons are nothing new for Duckworth Prestex, with the watches also stocked in Europe’s largest and most prestigious watch retailer - the Watches of Switzerland flagship store in London.

Duckworth Prestex founder Neil Duckworth, whose grandfather originally started the Prestex brand in the 1920s, said: “The appeal of our watches, with their distinctively British quality and style, is universal so I’m sure they are going to be a big hit in Australia: a country whose land and people we have always enjoyed very close links to.”

Neil’s father Gordon Duckworth took over the business in 1948 and expanded the company by opening stores across the north and selling well-known Swiss watch brands including Omega and Rolex. This expansion caused the Prestex range to be discontinued.

Neil relaunched the business last year with new Prestex designed watches, to bring the company back to Bolton.

Previously, the watchmakers had stopped rolling out their own branded designs, but focussed on brands like TAG Heuer, which Neil was the first to bring to the UK in the 1980s.

Duckworth Prestex watches were born out of the vision of Neil, who worked at the top of the Swiss watch industry for many years, yet always harboured the ambition to resurrect his family’s long-standing watch firm, which was mothballed back in the 1960s.

In 2021 the brand was revived, and it has just launched its second collection of watches, based on an original Prestex design from the 1920s.