Keasbey & Mattison

The internet has plenty to say about Keasbey & Mattison, most focused on their operations in Ambler Pennsylvania, known as the town that Asbestos built. Asbestos products were manufactured in Ambler, and many other places, from asbestos mined in Canada at the Bell asbestos mine that K&M owned and operated from 1906 until 1934.

Keasbey & Mattison purchased the Bell mine from John Bell & Sons on February 22, 1906 for the sum of $650,000. Ambler was selected as a home for the Keasbey & Mattison production facility because it was already on a rail line that conveniently transported raw asbestos from Thetford Mines, Quebec to Ambler, Pennsylvania. That same rail line also transported their finished products onward to the entire country.

K&M, in financial difficulty as a result of the great depression, was purchased in 1934 by Turner and Newall Ltd., of Manchester England through a wholly owned Canadian subsidiary. This purchase included Bell Asbestos Mines Inc., which at that time was a Delaware corporation subsidiary of Keasbey & Mattison. 

Turner & Newall reincorporated Bell Asbestos Mines Inc., using the same corporate name, as a Quebec company in 1936 and moved the head office to the mine site in Thetford Mines, Quebec.

Turner & Newall had 100% ownership of Keasbey & Mattison, renamed to the simple handle of K&M, until 1962 when K&M assets, including the Ambler facility were broken up and sold to Nicolet Industries and the CertainTeed Corporation. T&N cited the difficulty in managing the K&M operation from afar (Canada and England) as the reason to divest the company of the K&M product line and property. The K&M Corporation had five Divisions at the time it was divided and sold.

The Industrial Products Division was purchased by Nicolet Industries together with land and buildings, fixtures, machinery and equipment sales, accounting, production, research and engineering files, records, drawings and data, research equipment, pilot plant equipment and know-how. The totality of the purchase was the basis for the court to find in Gibson v. Armstrong World Industries, Inc., 648 F. Supp. 1538 (D. Colo. 1986) that liability for K&M’s asbestos manufacturing negligence (for industrial products only) transferred to Nicolet Industries.

CertainTeed purchased the Asbestos Cement Pipe Division and the Coupling Divisions. This purchase, like the Nicolet purchase of all land and assets was found to be sufficient to have K&M’s asbestos liability transferred to CertainTeed for the Divisions that CertainTeed purchased.

Keasbey & Mattison was liquidated and dissolved following the sale of its assets. As the Corporation no longer exists it is necessary to look to Nicolet or CertainTeed for compensation if you were exposed to K&M asbestos products and have now been diagnosed with an asbestos caused disease.

The above logo was registered in 1938 in the US by T&N but not registered in Canada until the Company was under the ownership of Nicolet Industries in 1964. At the time K&M claimed to be the “Best in Asbestos” virtually every product made under the K&M banner contained asbestos. They provided a listing to the  Canadian Trademark office in 1964 as follow:

1. “Asbestos cements, asbestos papers, asbestos shingles, composition shingles, asbestos mill board, wool felt insulation, furnace coverings, asbestos boards, slabs, tiles, sheets and sidings, wall boards, pipe coverings, block insulation, asbestos lumber, mineral wool, hair felt, magnesia insulation comprising magnesium and asbestos fibre, composition boards and miscellaneous building products and materials composed of asbestos cement composition such as doors, studding, partitions, and roofing.
2. Asbestos packings, especially adapted for use in pumps, pistons, and locomotives, stuffing boxes, valve stems, and as pressure glands, flax packings, brake linings, clutch facings, textile packings, and gaskets.
3. Asbestos packings and gaskets, such as rod, plunger, piston, stuffing box, and valve stem packings, sheet packings, seamless tube plate gaskets, boiler gaskets, asbestos gasketing tapes, woven asbestos gasketing tapes, asbestos wick, asbestos rope, tubular gasketing and hydraulic and steam pressure packings and gaskets of all types and forms.”

At the time of the Canadian registration of the K&M™ the company was quite proud of its products line up. Not surprisingly the above ™ logo is now listed as expunged.

If you were exposed to asbestos products that were manufactured by Keasbey & Mattison there are a number of asbestos compensation trust funds available to you. Contact us to get more information at 877.430.3383 x 224.