Company type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Automotive, Aerospace |
Founded | 9 September 1929 [1] |
Founder | Reginald Delpech |
Defunct | 24 September 2019 [1] |
Fate | Dissolved |
Headquarters | , |
Products | Laminated glass Toughened glass |
Number of employees | 1700 (1980s) |
Parent | Pilkington |
Triplex Safety Glass was a British brand of toughened glass and laminated glass. Their marque is often seen on vehicle and aircraft windscreens.
The Triplex Safety Glass Company Ltd was founded in 1912 by Kent-born Reginald Delpech (30 March 1881 - 29 May 1935). [2] [3] The company was established in 1912 to build laminated windscreens in Britain, under French patents.
On 9 September 1929 Triplex formed a joint venture company with Pilkington in St Helens. [1] The company is now part of Pilkington Automotive. [4]
In the 1960s Triplex bought its main competitor British Indestructo Glass, giving it a monopoly in British laminated glass production.[ citation needed ]
In the 1980s, around 1,000 people worked at the Triplex site in St Helens and about 700 at the site in Kings Norton.[ citation needed ]
Pilkington retired the Triplex brand in August 1993. The company was formally dissolved in September 2019. [1]
The company was headquartered at Eccleston, St Helens, at a factory built in 1928. It had its main plant at Kings Norton in the West Midlands.
The St Helens factory now manufactures under the GKN (Aerospace Transparency Systems) brand. Aerospace glass continues to be made at the site. It is believed[ who? ] that the automotive building fell out of use with the collapse of MG Rover in 2005 (when Pilkington downsized operations), although closure quite possibly predated this.
The Eccleston Site has since been demolished and a new housing estate built on the land.
Triplex made laminated and toughened windscreens and windows for the automotive, rail, marine and aerospace sectors. Particularly widespread is the use of so-called "triplex" adhesives, which result from the bonding of two or more glasses – single or safety – usually via polyvinylbutyric (PVB) membranes. The glazing is welded by heating and later pressing.
Triplex glasses exhibit the maximum impact resistance. This glazing system is distinguished for the optimal use of safety in use since, if it breaks, the glass pieces are held in place by means of the intermediate membranes, preventing serious injury.
Glass is an amorphous (non-crystalline) solid. Because it is often transparent and chemically inert, glass has found widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in window panes, tableware, and optics. Some common objects made of glass like "a glass" of water, "glasses", and "magnifying glass", are named after the material.
The windshield or windscreen of an aircraft, car, bus, motorbike, truck, train, boat or streetcar is the front window, which provides visibility while protecting occupants from the elements. Modern windshields are generally made of laminated safety glass, a type of treated glass, which consists of, typically, two curved sheets of glass with a plastic layer laminated between them for safety, and bonded into the window frame.
AGC Inc., formerly Asahi Glass Co., Ltd.'(旭硝子株式会社), is a Japanese global glass manufacturing company, headquartered in Tokyo. It is the largest glass company in the world and one of the core Mitsubishi companies.
St Helens is a town in Merseyside, England, with a population of 102,629. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, which had a population of 183,200 at the 2021 Census.
Pilkington is a glass-manufacturing company which is based in Lathom, Lancashire, England. It includes several legal entities in the UK, and is a subsidiary of Japanese company Nippon Sheet Glass (NSG). It was formerly an independent company listed on the London Stock Exchange and a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
A window film, sometimes called tint, is a thin laminate film that can be installed on the interior or exterior of glass surfaces in automobiles and boats, and as well as on the interior or exterior of glass in homes and buildings. It is usually made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family, due to its clarity, tensile strength, dimensional stability, and ability to accept a variety of surface-applied or embedded treatments.
Eccleston is a civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, Merseyside, England. At the 2011 census, it had a population of 10,433.
Safety glass is glass with additional safety features that make it less likely to break, or less likely to pose a threat when broken. Common designs include toughened glass, laminated glass, and wire mesh glass. Toughened glass was invented in 1874 by Francois Barthelemy Alfred Royer de la Bastie. Wire mesh glass was invented in 1892 by Frank Shuman. Laminated glass was invented in 1903 by the French chemist Édouard Bénédictus (1878–1930).
Architectural glass is glass that is used as a building material. It is most typically used as transparent glazing material in the building envelope, including windows in the external walls. Glass is also used for internal partitions and as an architectural feature. When used in buildings, glass is often of a safety type, which include reinforced, toughened and laminated glasses.
Nippon Sheet Glass Co., Ltd. is a Japanese glass manufacturing company. In 2006, it acquired Pilkington of the United Kingdom. This makes NSG/Pilkington one of the four largest glass companies in the world alongside another Japanese company Asahi Glass, Saint-Gobain, and Guardian Industries.
Knowsley Road in Eccleston, St Helens, Merseyside, was the home ground of St. Helens from 1890 until its closure in 2010. St Helens Town FC played their home fixtures at Knowsley Road from 2002 until 2010. For a period, the venue also hosted Liverpool F.C. Reserves. The stadium was demolished during spring 2011 and a new construction then known as Cunningham Grange, named after club legend Keiron Cunningham, was built on the site.
Tempered or toughened glass is a type of safety glass processed by controlled thermal or chemical treatments to increase its strength compared with normal glass. Tempering puts the outer surfaces into compression and the interior into tension. Such stresses cause the glass, when broken, to shatter into small granular chunks instead of splintering into large jagged shards as ordinary annealed glass does. These smaller, granular chunks are less likely to cause deep penetration when forced into the surface of an object compared to larger, jagged shards because the reduction in both the mass and the maximum dimension of a glass fragment corresponds with a reduction in both the momentum and the penetration depth of the glass fragment.
Laminated glass is a type of safety glass consisting of two or more layers of glass with one or more thin polymer interlayers between them which prevent the glass from breaking into large sharp pieces. Breaking produces a characteristic "spider web" cracking pattern when the impact is not enough to completely pierce the glass.
Libbey-Owens-Ford Company (LOF) was a producer of flat glass for the automotive and building products industries both for original equipment manufacturers and for replacement use. The company's headquarters and main factories were located in Toledo, Ohio, with large float glass plants in Rossford, Ohio, Laurinburg, North Carolina, Ottawa, Illinois, Shreveport, Louisiana, and Lathrop, California. The company was formed in 1930 by the merger of Libbey-Owens's sheet-glass operation with the Edward Ford Plate Glass Company, both located in Toledo.
Ravenhead Glass was a glassworks near Ravenhead Colliery, Lancashire, North West England. It was founded in 1850 by Frances Dixon and John Merson after a move from their earlier (1842) factory at Thatto Heath near St Helens. In 1852, this factory was sold to the Pilkington Brothers and Frances Dixon then acquired a 13-acre (53,000 m2) site at Ravenhead, building a new gas-powered glassworks.
BS 857:1967 is a currently in-use British Standard specification for flat or curved safety glasses for use in land vehicles, including road vehicles and railway vehicles. The standard specifies the mechanical, safety, impact, and optical requirements as well as sampling and test methods.
William Henry Pilkington, Baron Pilkington was an English glass manufacturer and president of the Federation of British Industries, who is remembered politically as chairman of the Pilkington Committee that produced the controversial Pilkington Report of 1962. He was also Chancellor of Loughborough University from 1966 to 1980.
Auto Windscreens is a United Kingdom automotive glazing company specialising in windscreen repair and replacement. It is owned by Auto Windscreens Services Limited, and is headquartered in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. Working predominantly with insurers, brokers and fleet management customers, the company operates a nationwide fitting centre network that utilises a mobile fleet of trained technicians.
Asahi India Glass Limited, known as AIS, is a glass solutions and manufacturing company in India. It was established in 1984. It manufactures automotive safety glass, float glass, architectural processed glass, and glass products. It also provides consumer glass offerings in the form of Glasxperts and Windshield Experts. AIS was established as a Joint Venture agreement between Mr. BM Labroo and family, Asahi Glass Co. Ltd., Japan, and Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. In the Indian passenger car glass segment, AIS has 77.1% market share as of 2017. AIS also holds 20% market share in India’s architectural glass segment as of 2017.
Composite glass is the collective term for a laminate having at least two glass panes which are in each case connected by means of an adhesive intermediate layer composed of plastic, e.g. by means of a casting resin or a thermoplastic composite film, which is highly tear-resistant and is viscoelastic. Composite glass should not be confused with composite windows.