Pilkington

Pilkington Group Limited is a multinational glass manufacturing company headquartered in St Helens, United Kingdom. It is a subsidiary of the Japan-based NSG Group. Prior to its acquisition by NSG in 2006 it was an independent company listed on the London Stock Exchange and for a time was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

History

The company was founded in 1826 as a partnership between members of the Pilkington and Greenall families, based in St Helens, Lancashire.. The venture used the trading name of St Helens Crown Glass Company. On the departure from the partnership of the last Greenall in 1845, the firm became known as Pilkington Brothers. In July 1894 the business was incorporated under the Companies Act 1862 as Pilkington Brothers Limited.

Pilkington was floated as a public company on the London Stock Exchange in 1970. It was for many years the biggest employer in the northwest industrial town. The distinctive blue-glass head office tower-block in Prescot Road, used as the firm's world HQ, and completed in 1964, still dominates the town's skyline.

Between 1953 and 1957, (Sir) Alastair Pilkington and Kenneth Bickerstaff invented the Float Glass Process, a revolutionary method of high quality flat glass production by floating molten glass over a bath of molten tin, avoiding the costly need to grind and polish plate glass to...
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