Victa made 72% of the Australian market and exported to 34 countries ( Includes the wholely owned subs of Turner & Pace )
Masport is actually a NZ company or was till MTD took them over.
AFAIK the sub standard management of Victa GMD Holdings breached their finance deal with Briggs by fitting Chinese 4 stroke engines and Briggs then forclosed, became the majority shareholder then accepted a under valued buy out offer from Briggs and became another Briggs company and now assembles sub standard "Briggs on a plate" mowers rapidly loosing market share till they become a minority of the market.
Aust is a small market so most of what we get now , sold under a local brand, are foreign made mowers rebadged.
In the 50's 60's & 70's Victa was a dominant manufacturer on a world stage 80% of the production was exported.
Now days they are a net importer.
The rot set in when they tooled up to make 2,000,000 Vortex mowers per annum assuming they would take the US market by storm and for the second time the USA government deemed them to be unsafe and refused permission to import them.
The same mower by that time was sold in 52 countries, all over Europe & even in Canada, although pressure was put on the Canadian distributor to restrict import numbers.
According to the USA government;-
they were "too quiet" and required a flashing light to alert people that they were running.
The discharge chute was too big so small children could crawl in there while the mower was running
The blade tip speed exceeded the USA safety limit ( it didnt because the USA model spun at 2900 rpm, the UK one spun at 3000 rpm & the Aus spun at 3200 )
They also wanted a parking brake to be fitted and a few other silly things before it would be reconsidered and it was blatiently obvious no matter what, the USA government was not going to allow them to be sold in the USA.
This by the way was standard USA government practice for just about anything Aust tried to export to the USA
They made new food safety laws regarding imported beef every couple of monthe to prevent Americans importing Australian beef so we sent it to Mexico where prime roasting & grilling meat was turned into hamburger patties and pet food.
This carried n till most of the Australian abbitours were taken over by USA owned companies when all of the safety concerns magically vanished.
The USA even tried to ban the Cochlea ear implant and stopped them being imported into the USA till patients had expired and local companies could overcharge the health system for inferiour copies.
Your government banned Australian made kangeroo leather car seats being imported by your factories because the hides were derrived from a government subsidized culling scheme, but happily allowed USA car seat makers to buy a fit the said same hides.
I could go on all day with examples but it would sound like sour grapes and just get boring.
Just like the USA in the 40's & 50's when there was big profit in making lawnmowers we had over 200 different brands made locally plus rebadged imports and strait imports.
Every retail chain had their own store brand plus usually a very expensive import to sell against them.
By comparrison Aust workers got pain near twice what USA workers did so we had more disposable income to spend on things like cars & lawnmowers than USA workers did so the market was proportionally bigger down here.
OTOH the ride on market was almost zero down here so the bulk of ride ons were rebadged USA ones
Merv Richardson started making his own engine in 1956 because Villiers could not supply him with enough engines for his mowers
Untill then they came with locally made Villiers and imported Villiers
