Cape plc

History

The company was founded in 1893 as the Cape Asbestos Company with the objective of mining asbestos in the Orange Free State and importing it into European countries where it could be woven into fire-resistant materials. By 1913 it had four factories in the London area including a facility in Barking and in 1939 it opened a manufacturing facility at Acre Mill near Hebden Bridge to meet the demand for gas mask filters made from blue asbestos during the Second World War. 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. Although it had a full listing during the 1980s it was at that time 67.3% owned by Charter Consolidated plc.

It transferred from a full listing to the Alternative Investment Market 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 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-registered.

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.