Cape plc is a British energy services company based in
West Drayton
West Drayton is a suburban town in the London Borough of Hillingdon. It was an ancient parish in the county of Middlesex and from 1929 was part of the Yiewsley and West Drayton Urban District, which became part of Greater London in 1965. Th ...
,
Middlesex
Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a historic county in southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the ceremonial county of Greater London, with small sections in neighbour ...
. It was acquired by Altrad in September 2017.
History
The company was founded in 1893 as the ''Cape Asbestos Company'' with the objective of mining
asbestos in the
Orange Free State
The Orange Free State ( nl, Oranje Vrijstaat; af, Oranje-Vrystaat;) was an independent Boer sovereign republic under British suzerainty in Southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century, which ceased to exist after it was defeat ...
and importing it into European countries where it could be woven into fire-resistant materials.
By 1913 it had four factories in the
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
area including a facility in
Barking
Barking may refer to:
Places
* Barking, London, a town in East London, England
** London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, a local government district covering the town of Barking
** Municipal Borough of Barking, a historical local government dist ...
[ and in 1939 it opened a manufacturing facility at Acre Mill near ]Hebden Bridge
Hebden Bridge is a market town in the Upper Calder Valley in West Yorkshire, England. It is west of Halifax and 14 miles (21 km) north-east of Rochdale, at the confluence of the River Calder and the Hebden Water. The town is the largest ...
to meet the demand for gas mask filters made from blue asbestos
Riebeckite is a sodium-rich member of the amphibole group of silicate minerals, chemical formula Na2(Fe2+3Fe3+2)Si8O22(OH)2. It forms a solid solution series with magnesioriebeckite. It crystallizes in the monoclinic system, usually as long prism ...
during the Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
. In 1976 it established a scaffolding division and in the late 1970s it developed asbestos-free products such that by 1980 it had become the world's foremost supplier of asbestos-free protection and insulation board.[
In 1990, the company was involved in an important ]UK company law
The United Kingdom company law regulates corporations formed under the Companies Act 2006. Also governed by the Insolvency Act 1986, the UK Corporate Governance Code, European Union Directives and court cases, the company is the primary lega ...
case, ''Adams v Cape Industries plc
''Adams v Cape Industries plc'' 990Ch 433 is a UK company law case on separate legal personality and limited liability of shareholders. The case also addressed long-standing issues under the English conflict of laws as to when a company would b ...
'', concerning separate legal personality
In law, a legal person is any person or 'thing' (less ambiguously, any legal entity) that can do the things a human person is usually able to do in law – such as enter into contracts, sue and be sued, own property, and so on. The reason for ...
and limited liability
Limited liability is a legal status in which a person's financial liability is limited to a fixed sum, most commonly the value of a person's investment in a corporation, company or partnership. If a company that provides limited liability to it ...
of shareholders for asbestos related injuries.Alternative Investment Market
AIM (formerly the Alternative Investment Market) is a sub-market of the London Stock Exchange that was launched on 19 June 1995 as a replacement to the previous Unlisted Securities Market (USM) that had been in operation since 1980. It allows ...
in 2002 in a bid to cut costs and it reached a settlement in 2003 to pay £7.5 million to 7,500 claimants from South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
who had been seeking compensation over many years for asbestos-related health problems. In 2006 it established a £40 million fund for claimants based in the UK.
In 2006 it bought DBI, an industrial cleaning specialist based in the UK, and in 2007 it acquired PCH, a scaffolding and hoist company based in Australia. In June 2011 it was transferred back to a full listing from the Alternative Investment Market and was restructured in such a way that it was ultimately Jersey
Jersey ( , ; nrf, Jèrri, label= Jèrriais ), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey (french: Bailliage de Jersey, links=no; Jèrriais: ), is an island country and self-governing Crown Dependency near the coast of north-west France. It is the l ...
-registered.
The company was acquired by Altrad for £332 million in September 2017.
Operations
Cape provides "non-mechanical" multi-disciplined integrated support services covering such disciplines as access, scaffolding, insulation, coatings, passive fire protection, refractory linings, environmental services, oil and gas storage tanks and heat exchanger replacement and refurbishment, project management and other essential services to major industrial clients in the energy sector.
References
External links
Official site
*
{{Authority control
Companies based in the London Borough of Hillingdon
British companies established in 1893
Energy companies of the United Kingdom
Asbestos
Energy companies established in 1893
Former defence companies of the United Kingdom
2017 mergers and acquisitions