Everything about W R Grace And Company totally explained
W. R. Grace and Company is a
Columbia, Maryland,
United States based
chemical conglomerate.
The company has two main divisions, Davison Chemicals and Performance Chemicals. The Davison unit makes chemical
catalysts, refining catalysts, and
silica-based products that let other companies make products from refined
crude oil. Its Performance Chemicals unit makes
cement and
concrete additives, fireproofing chemicals, and packaging sealants. The customers include chemicals companies, construction firms, and oil refiners.
Their self-description is "a premier specialty chemicals and materials company." Grace has more than 6,400 employees in nearly 40 countries, and annual sales of more than
$2.5 billion.
History
W.R. Grace and Company was founded in
1854 in
Peru by
William Russell Grace (1832-1904), who left
Ireland due to the
Potato Famine. He went first to Peru to work as a ship's chandler to the merchantmen harvesting
guano (
fertilizer and
gunpowder ingredient due to its high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen). The company moved to
New York City in
1865. Working in fertilizer and
machinery, the company was formally chartered in
1872, and incorporated in
1899. Joseph P. Grace Sr. became company president in
1907. During the
Second World War, in
1945,
J. Peter Grace Jr., W.R. Grace's grandson, took control of the company. The company began to diversify.
In
1954, the company bought Davison Chemical Company (founded by William T. Davison as Davison, Kettlewell & Company in
1832), and the Dewey & Almy Chemical Company (founded in
1919 by Bradley Dewey and Charles Almy).
At one time, Grace's main business interest was in shipping. To get its products from Peru to
North America and
Europe, including guano and
sugar, and noticing the need for other goods to be traded, William Grace founded a shipping division. It sold the Miller stake in
1969 to
Philip Morris for $130 million, topping a deal with
PepsiCo for $120 million.
In
1987, with a can sealing plant in
Shanghai, Grace became the first wholly foreign-owned company to do business in The
People's Republic of China.
Grace's corporate headquarters are located in Columbia, Maryland. Although W. R. Grace commissioned the
Grace Building in
New York City, built in 1971, the company no longer has any offices occupying it.
Subsidiaries and products
Subsidiaries and some of their products include:
- Grace Davison
- Grace Performance Chemicals
- Grace Construction Products
- Darex
- Residential Building Materials
- roofing membranes and flashings for windows, doors, decks and roof detail areas
Contamination incidents
W. R. Grace and Company has been involved in a number of controversial incidents of proven and alleged corporate crimes, including exposing workers to
asbestos contamination in
Libby and
Troy,
Montana, water contamination (the basis of the book and film
A Civil Action) in
Woburn, Massachusetts, and an
Acton, Massachusetts Superfund site.
Trichloroethylene
In the 1970s, it was discovered that W. R. Grace had improperly disposed of
trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent, which then entered the town's groundwater. The chemical appears to have caused fatal cases of
leukemia and
cancer, as well as a wide variety of other health problems, among the citizens of the town.
Asbestos
Despite the fact that Grace is troubled with asbestos lawsuits, it still sells $1.4 billion of products a year. 150,000 lawsuits have been settled or dismissed and 120,000 remain. W. R. Grace and Company has faced more than 250,000 asbestos-related lawsuits. Grace no longer makes asbestos-related products.
After asbestos injury claims nearly doubled in 2000, W. R. Grace & Company filed for
bankruptcy protection in 2001 due to the unexpected increase in asbestos
litigation. The
United States Department of Justice determined that Grace had transferred 4 to 5 billion dollars to spin-off companies it had recently purchased, shortly before declaring bankruptcy. Justice Department attornies found that this amounted to a "fraudulent transfer" of money in order to protect Grace from civil suits related to asbestos. The bankruptcy court ordered the companies to return nearly $1 billion to Grace, which will remain as part of the assets to consider in the bankruptcy hearings.
In 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice began criminal proceedings against W.R. Grace. The department announced that a grand jury in Montana indicted W.R. Grace and seven current and former Grace executives for knowingly endangering residents of
Libby, Montana, and concealing information about the health affects of its asbestos mining operations. According to the indictment, W. R. Grace and its executives, as far back as the 1970s, attempted to conceal information about the adverse health effects of the company’s
vermiculite mining operations and distribution of vermiculite in the
Libby, Montana community. The defendants are also accused of obstructing the government’s cleanup efforts and wire fraud. To date, according to the indictment, approximately 1,200 residents of Libby area have been identified as suffering from some kind of asbestos-related abnormality. The criminal proceedings are ongoing as of July 2007.
Popular culture reaction
The movie
A Civil Action, starring
John Travolta, was based on these law suits.
The
PBS television show
P.O.V., which highlights independent films in August 2007 premiered the movie
Libby, Montana that documents the thousands of people in
Libby, Montana, that have been exposed to and are suffering the effects of exposure to asbestos. The show also discusses the criminal indictments of many Grace executives for covering up the asbestos related illnesses and deaths.
NPR ran a piece on their show
All Things Considered discussing the criminal charges against W. R. Grace. A U.S. attorney general alleges that the company and managers of the mine in Libby, Montana, knew about the dangers of the asbestos they were dumping into the air for over 20 years.
==
Further Information
Get more info on 'W R Grace And Company'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://w__r__grace_and_company.totallyexplained.com">W. R. Grace and Company Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
