Saunders-Roe Limited, also known as Saro, was a British aerospace and marine-engineering company based at Columbine Works, East Cowes, Isle of Wight.

[2] The name was adopted in 1929 after Alliott Verdon Roe (see Avro) and John Lord took a controlling interest in the aircraft and boat-builders S. E. Saunders.

In January 1931 Flight magazine revealed that Whitehall Securities[4] Corporation Limited acquired a substantial holding in Saunders Roe.

Secondly, the plywood section of the business carried on at the factory on the River Medina was transferred to a new company, Saro Laminated Wood Products Ltd., in consideration for a majority of the shares therein.

It was situated in Queens Square, overlooking the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children In 1959 it demonstrated the first practical hovercraft built under contract to the National Research Development Corporation to Christopher Cockerell's design, the SR.N1.

In the same year Saro's helicopter and hovercraft interests were taken over by Westland Aircraft which continued the Skeeter family with the Scout and Wasp.

In the late 1960s/early 1970s the Saunders-Roe Folly Works, by then owned by Hawker Siddeley was merged with the Gloster works to form Gloster-Saro utilising both companies' expertise in aluminium forming to produce fire appliances and tankers in the Gloster factory at Hucclecote, mostly based on Reynolds-Boughton chassis.

It was this division, in conjunction with the Royal Aircraft Establishment, that was responsible for the design, manufacture and static testing of the Black Knight Rocket, the first of which was successfully fired at Woomera, South Australia, on 7 September 1958.

The inside of the tubes is coated with a fluorescent powder, which glows as a result of the ionizing radiation of the tritium gas.

In early 1953, Saunders-Roe at Anglesey completed the Mark 3 airborne lifeboat to be fitted underneath the Avro Shackleton maritime reconnaissance aircraft.

Parachuted at a rate of 20 feet per second into the rescue zone, the craft was powered by a Vincent motorcycles HRD T5 15 hp engine; sails and a fishing kit were also provided.

[17] During World War II, Saunders-Roe opened a factory at Fryars in Llanfaes, Anglesey, converting and maintaining Catalina flying boats.

620 prefabricated Rivalloy (the brand name comes from rivetted (aluminium) alloy) single deck buses components for local assembly were sold to Autobuses Modernos SA, Cuba which later became Omnibus Metropolitanos, S.A. Another large customer was Auckland Regional Transport in New Zealand who took the Rivalloy body on 90 Daimler Freeline chassis.

In 1948 the only double deck bodies to be exported were 20 ordered by South African operator Durban Motor Transport which were mounted on AEC Regent Mark III chassis.

The factory later passed to Cammell Laird who mainly used it for producing refuse-collection vehicles, but when Metro Cammell Weymann had a production backlog, they completed a batch of MCW-style double deck forward-entrance highbridge bodies on Leyland Titan PD3 for Brighton Corporation, these were numbered 31–5, registered LUF131-5F and delivered in June and July 1968, they were unusual as front engined half-cab buses built to be driver operated.