Haveg Corp

Haveg Corporation, later Haveg Industries, was a Delaware company that molded acid-resistant chemical-plant equipment (pipe, tanks, ducts and towers) from asbestos and resin under the Haveg name, and later made Chemtite asbestos-resin pipe. Union Carbide used Haveg equipment for decades and in 1968 found the filler of its Haveg 41 to be amphibole asbestos and talc. A 2017 court decision says Ametek bought Haveg's assets in 1980; our library holds no record of a Haveg bankruptcy or trust.

Draft. The history on this page was written from the documents in our library and has not yet been reviewed by a person.

History

The trade magazine Asbestos first mentioned Haveg in October 1925, calling it "a new German product" of asbestos mixed with Bakelite and recommending it for acid-resisting tanks.⁸ A July 1933 article said the German company Saureschutz Gesellschaft had been formed in 1922 to develop acid-resisting materials, that Haveg was introduced in Europe in 1925, and that it had then been made in the United States "for only six months."¹ The same article described Haveg as asbestos molded with a phenol-formaldehyde resin under heat and pressure, and said one-piece tanks had been made as large as ten feet across.¹

By 1936 Asbestos placed the Haveg Corporation in Newark, Delaware.⁹ In 1938 it listed products made of Haveg, including pipes and fittings, pickling tanks, acid-proof kettles, valves and fume ducts.² In January 1941 the magazine noted an article titled "Phenolic-Asbestos Plant Equipment" by William H. Adams, Jr., of the Haveg Corporation, in Modern Plastics.¹⁰ In 1953 Asbestos reported that the company, then at Marshallton, Delaware, had issued a bulletin on its corrosion-resistant equipment, "molded from a mixture of acid digested asbestos and synthetic resin."³ By 1980 Union Carbide shipping lists named the company Haveg Industries, with locations at Marshallton, Delaware, and Winooski, Vermont.¹¹

Asbestos products

A handbook page in a Union Carbide exhibit on its Bakelite molding compounds describes "Haveg" as a phenolic resin-asbestos composition sold only as finished equipment, molded by packing a putty-like mix into a simple mold.¹² In 1979 a Union Carbide materials engineer, A. J. Montero, wrote that Haveg piping was made by loading "a mixture of asbestos and resin (phenolic or furan) into molds" and applying heat and pressure. He said Chemtite piping, "also manufactured by Haveg," was pressure-molded from asbestos fibers and epoxy or phenolic resin.⁴ His memo names the grades Haveg 41 (phenolic) and Haveg 61 (furan).¹³ A Haveg advertisement in our library describes Chemtite piping as "Asbestos-reinforced epoxy and phenolic systems."¹⁴

The documents differ on who made Chemtite. A 1963 Union Carbide memorandum says Union Carbide had helped Johns-Manville market "their new Chemtite phenolic and epoxy piping," while the 1979 memo says Chemtite was made by Haveg.¹⁵⁴ The library does not show when or how Chemtite passed from one company to the other.

What the documents show

Union Carbide's plants. The 1963 Union Carbide memorandum, by L. S. VanDelinder, says the use of asbestos-reinforced phenolic materials "dates back to the thirties." It says the company had used "a considerable amount of Haveg piping" in its Ethanol Acid Unit and in other acid service.¹⁵ It lists Haveg 41 trays and supports installed in a hydrogen cyanide stripping still in February 1963.¹⁶ The 1979 memo says Haveg had been used for many items of equipment in the SEVIN complex at the Institute, West Virginia, plant. It reported nozzle breakage, acid weeping and broken pipe, and advised against Haveg and Chemtite pipe in the reaction area of a cumene unit at Ponce because of their low mechanical strength.¹³

What was in Haveg 41. A May 1968 Union Carbide research report examined Haveg 41 from a leaking chlorine-removal column at the Institute plant. It said Haveg 41 "reportedly is a phenolic resin impregnated with 60 to 70 per cent asbestos."¹⁷ X-ray diffraction identified the filler as a mixture of talc and a long-fibered amphibole asbestos, about 55 per cent amphibole and 45 per cent talc in material from an earlier production lot. The report said the structure matched anthophyllite in one reference, though actinolite or tremolite was "probably more correct."⁶¹⁷¹⁸ This differs from the 1953 description of "acid digested asbestos," which does not name the fiber type.³

Repairing Haveg equipment. A January 1987 Union Carbide industrial hygiene report from the Institute plant describes two boilermakers chipping Haveg material off a vessel with hammer and chisel. It says the vessel was "known to contain asbestos since the vessel was fabricated prior to 1980."¹⁹ The workers wore airline respirators. The report found their eight-hour average exposures below the permissible limit because the work was short, but recorded short-term concentrations of 0.16 to 0.95 fibers/cc. It recommended water mist, HEPA exhaust or glove bags on future Haveg repairs.²⁰ A 1988 Dow Chemical asbestos handbook for its Texas operations lists Haveg piping among the asbestos-containing materials not to be used where an adequate alternative exists.²¹

Asbestos supply. Haveg Industries appears on a North American Asbestos Corporation list of fiber customers covering 1954 to 1975, and on Union Carbide's 1980 ship-to lists for Calidria asbestos.²²¹¹ In March 1980 a Union Carbide salesman reported that Haveg's Winooski plant had used Calidria RG-100 in a specialty electronic cable coating. He wrote that the newer formulations contained no asbestos, not because it "was intentionally formulated out because it was asbestos," but because the coatings failed new low-temperature flex tests.²³

Lawsuits and successor

In Nutt v. AC&S, Inc. (Delaware Superior Court, 1983), Haveg Industries was sued as an employer, alongside du Pont, by Delaware asbestos workers and their wives. The court granted Haveg's and du Pont's motions to dismiss, holding that Delaware's workers' compensation law barred the workers' claims that their employers' alleged fraud had cost them their claims against others, and the wives' consortium claims against the employers.²⁴ In In re Asbestos Products Liability Litigation (No. VI) (E.D. Pa., 2017), plaintiffs sued Ametek as successor to Haveg Industries. The opinion records the plaintiffs' acknowledgment that when Ametek bought Haveg in 1980, the agreement on its face covered only Haveg's assets. The opinion also records the plaintiffs' assertion, citing business documents and testimony, that Hercules Inc. had bought Haveg in 1964 as a wholly-owned subsidiary, and the defendants' argument that under the purchase agreement Haveg and Hercules kept most liabilities, "including those regarding asbestos injury"; the court found it "unclear from the record in what capacity Haveg survived."⁷ The court did not decide whether Ametek was a successor; it sent the case back to state court.⁷ Captions in later cases name Hercules, LLC (in Bondurant v. 3M Company, 2019) and Ametek (in Smith v. Schlage Lock Company, 2021) as successors to Haveg Industries; a caption states a party's allegation, not a court's finding.²⁵²⁶ Our library holds no record of a Haveg bankruptcy, and no asbestos trust on our list pays claims for Haveg products.²⁷

References

1. Asbestos, July 1933, p. 8
2. Asbestos, September 1938, p. 12
3. Asbestos, January 1953, p. 60
4. UC-2410: A. J. Montero to E. E. Baez and Others on Using Haveg and Chemtite Asbestos-Resin Piping in the Ponce Plant Cumene Unit (1979), p. 1
5. UC-2407: L. S. VanDelinder Memorandum on the Use of Plastics in Chemical Process Applications (1963)
6. UC-803: Union Carbide R&D Project Reports on Haveg-41 Asbestos Filler (1968–1972), p. 1
7. In re Asbestos Products Liability Litigation (No. VI) (E.D. Pa. 2017)
8. Asbestos, October 1925, p. 44
9. Asbestos, September 1936, p. 4
10. Asbestos, January 1941, p. 32
11. UC-245: Calidria Shipments to UCC Facilities and Customer Ship-To List (1980), p. 28
12. UC-162: Union Carbide, 'History of BAKELITE' with handbook pages (1957–1974), p. 34
13. UC-2410, p. 2
14. Chemtite (Haveg), citing Advertisement: CHEMTITE PIPING SYSTEMS (HAVEG), ACL Doc 15256
15. UC-2407, p. 8
16. UC-2407, p. 15
17. UC-803, p. 2
18. UC-803, p. 4 (Table 1)
19. UC-851: Industrial Hygiene Sampling Results for Asbestos Exposure During HAVEG Vessel Repair, Institute Plant Boilermaker Shop (1987), p. 1
20. UC-851, pp. 2–3
21. UC-1082: Dow Chemical Company, Texas Operations Asbestos Handbook (Revised November 1988), p. 11
22. UC-1118: North American Asbestos Corporation Transmittal of Textile and Fiber Customer Lists, 1954–1975 (1976), p. 18
23. UC-583: Gordon L. Dickson Call Report on Haveg Industries, Winooski, VT (1980), p. 1
24. Nutt v. AC & S., Inc. (Delaware Superior Court, 1983)
25. Bondurant v. 3M Company (2019), caption
26. Smith v. Schlage Lock Company, LLC (4th Cir. 2021), caption
27. Asbestos trusts A–Z

Asbestos products

2 products our documents name Haveg Corp as making or selling. Each product's page says what the documents say about it, including its asbestos content.

• Chemtite (Haveg)
• Havestos (Haveg)

In our library

2 documents in our library name Haveg Corp, by collection.

Other library documents (2)

• Advertisement: CHEMTITE PIPING SYSTEMS (HAVEG) (publisher)
• Product image: Chemtite Piping Systems (HAVEG) (publisher)

In the Union Carbide documents

Haveg Corp is named in 3 Union Carbide documents dated 1940 to 1979 (3 mentioned), from asbestos lawsuits over Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos. All are published in our collection.

• Wm. H. Adams, Jr., 'Phenolic-asbestos plant equipment' in Modern Plastics (1940) UC-5322 (mentioned)
• R. K. Louis, 'Phenolic Resins and Molding Materials,' Bakelite Company Preprint for the Society of Plastics Engineers, Milwaukee Section (1957) UC-164 (mentioned)
• A. J. Montero to E. E. Baez and Others on Using Haveg and Chemtite Asbestos-Resin Piping in the Ponce Plant Cumene Unit (1979) UC-2410 (mentioned)

Names in the documents

The spellings documents use for Haveg Corp, OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: HAVEG.

Where this comes from

This page brings together every document in our library that names Haveg Corp, across collections. Titles and affiliations are taken from the documents themselves, and units and subsidiaries are grouped under the company they belong to.