Turners Asbestos Cement Co.

Turners Asbestos Cement Co. (TAC) was the asbestos-cement company of the British asbestos group Turner & Newall, based at Trafford Park, Manchester. It made asbestos-cement roofing, sheets and pipes under names such as Everite, Turnall and Poilite, along with asbestos electrical insulation and board, and by 1959 sprayed Limpet asbestos in Britain. In 1970 it was merged into TAC Construction Materials Ltd.; Turner & Newall's asbestos claims are now paid by the Federal-Mogul Asbestos Personal Injury 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 library's sources give two founding dates. A 1966 history of Turner & Newall in Asbestos magazine says Turners Asbestos Cement Company Limited was incorporated in 1929⁸. A 1971 notice of Turner & Newall's fiftieth-anniversary history says Turners Asbestos Cement was formed in 1933⁹. Asbestos reported in October 1933 that, from October 1 of that year, Turner & Newall was combining its manufacture and sale of asbestos cement and asbestos electrical insulation goods into one organization, Turners Asbestos Cement Co. (Branch of Turner & Newall, Ltd.), at Trafford Park; four subsidiaries, including Turners Asbestos Cement, Ltd., Bell's Poilite & Everite Co., Ltd. and British Fibrocement Works, Ltd., were to be wound up¹.

A pocket product compendium from about 1935, issued by the company as a branch of Turner & Newall, lists Turnall Trafford Tiles, Everite corrugated sheets and pressure, soil and rainwater pipes, Poilite sheets and slates, and Serval asbestos felts, among others². It opens by calling asbestos "Nature's Mineral Paradox"². A 1936 advertisement promoted Everite corrugated sheets to architects for use in interiors¹⁰.

In 1938 the company built a new factory on the site of the former Beardmore shipyard at Dalmuir, near Glasgow, for asbestos-cement pressure pipes and roofing materials^{11, 12}. Asbestos reported in September 1938 that the £200,000 factory had begun production late in August and was the first asbestos-cement plant to operate in Scotland¹². In February 1942 Asbestos, reporting on Turner & Newall's year, said the company had acquired an additional factory that was already making asbestos-cement roofing¹³. The company also had a works at Widnes, Lancashire¹⁴. A 1943 U.S. patent for a reinforced asbestos-cement roofing sheet was assigned to Turners Asbestos Cement Company, Ltd.¹⁵ Its Everite Bigsix corrugated sheets, painted sky blue, were used as the ceiling of the main hall of the British Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair, according to a May 1939 report¹⁶.

By 1950 Asbestos listed Turners Asbestos Cement Co., Ltd., Trafford Park, as one of Turner & Newall's subsidiary companies¹⁷. In December 1963 the magazine reported that the company had opened a new £1 million factory for moulded asbestos-cement products on the Ditton Industrial Estate in England¹⁸.

Asbestos products

The company's product range reached well beyond roofing. Turner & Newall's 1965 annual report, as quoted in Asbestos, named rising sales of Turnall ships board and insulation board, Sindanyo and Siluminite electrical insulation products, Turnall sewerage and drainage pipes and Everite pressure pipes, and record sales of asbestos felt, millboard and paper³. A 1966 article described Turnall asbestos insulation board as a non-combustible material used for suspended ceilings, partitions and fire protection, and Turnall asbestos ships board as a pressed sheet for ships' joinery work⁴. In 1969 the company introduced Turnall Weatherall asbestos-cement slates¹⁹.

Sprayed Limpet. In September 1959 Asbestos reported that the spraying of Limpet asbestos in Britain was carried out by Turners Asbestos Cement Co. Ltd. on a contract basis, anywhere in the United Kingdom⁵. The magazine noted that Keasbey & Mattison was the sole U.S. licensee of the material²⁰. In 1960 the company issued a brochure titled Sprayed Limpet Asbestos—Heat and Sound Insulation²¹.

Overseas and Irish companies

Turner & Newall used the Turners Asbestos Cement name for separate companies abroad. Turners Asbestos Cement (Nigeria) Limited, which Asbestos described as jointly owned by Turner & Newall and the Eastern Nigeria government, opened a factory at Emene, near Enugu, on October 18, 1963, to make asbestos-cement sheets and pipes²². Its pipe plant was in production by May 1965²³. A second Nigerian company, Turners Asbestos Cement (Kaduna) Ltd., had started making asbestos-cement sheeting in northern Nigeria, Asbestos reported in February 1973²⁴. In Northern Ireland, Turner & Newall opened an asbestos-cement building products factory at Ballyclare, registered as Turners Asbestos Cement (Northern Ireland) Limited²⁵.

Merger and the company's end

Asbestos reported in August 1970 that Turners Asbestos Cement Co. Ltd. and J. W. Roberts Ltd. would merge on October 1, 1970, to form TAC Construction Materials Limited, with J. K. Shepherd, chairman and managing director of Turners Asbestos Cement, as chairman and joint managing director⁶. Turner & Newall's next annual report said it had been decided to close the Dalmuir factory and concentrate production at the company's other factories²⁶.

What the documents show

The library holds the company's product literature and the trade press's reports of its plants and products, but no internal TAC papers on dust or health. Turner & Newall's own documents are gathered on its company page.

Bankruptcy and trust

Our Federal-Mogul and Turner & Newall trust page states that the American auto-parts company Federal-Mogul bought Turner & Newall in the late 1990s, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 1, 2001, and emerged under a plan that took effect on December 27, 2007, creating the Federal-Mogul Asbestos Personal Injury Trust⁷. The trust's T&N subfund covers Turner & Newall's insulation and asbestos-cement products⁷.

References

1. Asbestos, October 1933, p. 35
2. Turners Asbestos Cement Co.: Pocket TAC Compendium (c. 1935)
3. Asbestos, February 1966, p. 22
4. Asbestos, September 1966, p. 8
5. Asbestos, September 1959, p. 16
6. Asbestos, August 1970, p. 20
7. Federal-Mogul and Turner & Newall (T&N) trust claims
8. Asbestos, May 1966, p. 6
9. Asbestos, February 1971, p. 14
10. Turners Asbestos Cement Co.: Modern Interior (1936)
11. Asbestos, May 1938, p. 40
12. Asbestos, September 1938, p. 38
13. Asbestos, February 1942, p. 33
14. Widnes, England plant page
15. Reinforced Asbestos-Cement Sheet (US Patent 2,335,208, 1943)
16. Asbestos, May 1939, p. 8
17. Asbestos, October 1950, p. 41
18. Asbestos, December 1963, p. 9
19. Asbestos, December 1969, p. 32
20. Asbestos, December 1959, p. 42
21. Asbestos, November 1960, p. 28
22. Asbestos, November 1963, p. 27
23. Asbestos, May 1965, p. 21
24. Asbestos, February 1973, p. 23
25. Asbestos, August 1968, p. 28
26. Asbestos, August 1971, p. 50

Units and subsidiaries

Turners Asbestos Cement Co. was part of Turner & Newall.

Asbestos products

3 products our documents name Turners Asbestos Cement Co. as making or selling. Each product's page says what the documents say about it, including its asbestos content.

• Siluminite (Turners Asbestos Cement)
• Turnall Weatherall (Turners Asbestos Cement)
• Turnall Weatherall (Turners Asbestos Cement Co. Ltd. (Turner & Newall))

Plants

Plants where asbestos products were made that the documents say Turners Asbestos Cement Co. ran.

• Turner & Newall and later owners plant at Widnes, Lancashire
• Turner & Newall Limited and later owners plant at Emene (Enugu), Eastern Region
• Turners Asbestos Cement Co. plant at Dalmuir, Scotland
• Turners Asbestos Cement plant at Ballyclare, Northern Ireland

In our library

2 documents in our library name Turners Asbestos Cement Co., by collection.

Other library documents (2)

• Turners Asbestos Cement Co.: Modern Interior (1936) (publisher)
• Turners Asbestos Cement Co.: Pocket TAC Compendium (c. 1935) (publisher)

Where this comes from

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