CoorsTek, Inc. is a privately owned manufacturer of technical
ceramicA ceramic is an inorganic, non-metallic solid prepared by the action of heat and subsequent cooling. Ceramic materials may have a crystalline or partly crystalline structure, or may be amorphous...
s,
semiconductorA semiconductor is a material that has an electrical resistivity between that of a conductor and an insulator, that is, generally in the range 10
3 Siemens/cm to 10
−8 S/cm. Devices made from semiconductor materials are the foundation of modern electronics, including radio,...
tooling, plastic tubing, medical devices and other industrial products. CoorsTek’s headquarters and primary factories are located in
Golden, ColoradoThe historic City of Golden is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat of Jefferson County, Colorado, United States. Golden lies along Clear Creek at the eastern edge of the foothills of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Founded during the Pike's Peak Gold Rush on 16 June 1859, the...
, USA, in the foothills west of
DenverThe City and County of Denver is the capital and the most populous city of the state of Colorado, in the United States. Denver is a consolidated city-county located in the South Platte River Valley on the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains...
. The company is owned by a trust of the Coors family. The president and chairman is John K. Coors, a great-grandson of founder and brewing magnate
Adolph CoorsAdolph Herman Joseph Coors, Sr. was a brewer who started the Adolph Coors Company in Golden, Colorado in 1873.-Early years:...
I.
Adolph Coors and John Herold
Prussian-born Adolph Coors (1847–1929) opened the Colorado Glass Works in 1887 to manufacture beer bottles for his brewery, the
Adolph Coors Brewing CompanyThe Golden, Colorado Adolph Coors Company was formerly a holding company controlled by the heirs of founder Adolph Coors. Its principal subsidiary is the Coors Brewing Company. It was founded in 1873....
, west of Denver. After the turn of the century, the bottle market changed, and the brewery was able to buy bottles elsewhere more economically than making its own. The Glass Works was leased to German-born John Herold, who incorporated the Herold China and Pottery Company in 1910 at 600 Ninth St in Golden. Herold used
clayClay is a naturally occurring material composed primarily of fine-grained minerals, which show plasticity through a variable range of water content, and which can be hardened when dried and/or fired...
from nearby mines to make dinnerware and heat-resistant
porcelainPorcelain is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials, generally including clay in the form of kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between and...
known then as ovenware. The now-abandoned clay pits form the western boundary of the
Colorado School of MinesThe Colorado School of Mines is a public teaching and research university devoted to engineering and applied science, with special expertise in the development and stewardship of the Earth's natural resources. Located in the small town of Golden, Colorado, CSM was ranked 77th in America among...
campus. Adolph Coors became the majority stockholder and was elected to the board of directors of Herold China in 1912. John Herold resigned, and Adolph Coors Company acquired Herold China in 1914. The company began producing chemical porcelain in 1915 as a result of a World War I embargo on German imports. Herold China was renamed
Coors Porcelain Company in 1920, and the trademark “Coors U.S.A.” was first used. Adolph Coors’ second son,
Herman F. CoorsThe home of Herman Frederick Coors was originally built as a modest bungalow sometime around the 1910s by Elmer Bengson, a son of a prominent area Swedish immigrant family...
, was named manager. Herman’s older brother Adolph II was second in command at the brewery.
Rosebud china and Prohibition after WW1
After World War I, one of Coors Porcelain’s specialties was Rosebud fine china. During
ProhibitionProhibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is a sumptuary law which prohibits alcohol. Typically, the manufacture, transportation, import, export, and sale of alcoholic beverages is restricted or illegal. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries...
, the ceramic business was largely what kept the parent company afloat. The original factory site at 600 Ninth St in Golden was the only Coors Porcelain facility until the 1970s, and remained the company headquarters until a new facility was built northeast of Golden in the early 1990s. The Ninth St plant consists of several adjoining buildings that occupy four square blocks, and is still CoorsTek’s largest manufacturing site.
Herman Coors managed the company in the early days. Herman’s younger brother, Grover C. Coors, began the fledgling company’s foray into ceramic technology by inventing a tool for forming spark plug insulation in 1919. Herman left in 1925 to start the H.F. Coors China Company, a manufacturer of dishes for restaurants and institutional use, in Inglewood, CA.
Aluminum beer cans
In the 1950s, Coors Porcelain’s parent company investigated the possibility of replacing steel
beverage canA beverage can, aluminum can, or drinks can is a container manufactured from aluminum or steel designed to hold a single serving of a beverage. Beverage cans are also made of tinplate: see tin can.- History :...
s with aluminum ones, as part of a closed-loop
recyclingRecycling involves processing used materials into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution and water pollution by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal, and lower...
system. The effort was the brainchild of
W.K. “Bill” CoorsWilliam Coors is the grandson of Adolph Coors, the founder of the Coors Brewing Company. William Coors has been affiliated with the company for 64 years, and was a board member from 1973 to 2003.-Biographical information:...
, the second son of Adolph II. A Porcelain warehouse at the corner of Ninth St and Washington Ave in Golden was selected to house the
pilot plantA pilot plant is a small chemical processing system which is operated to generate information about the behavior of the system for use in design of larger facilities....
for the aluminum can line. The first aluminum beer can was produced at the site in January, 1959. B.L. “Bob” Mornin, a
ceramic engineerCeramic engineering is the science and technology of creating objects from inorganic, non-metallic materials. This is done either by the action of heat, or at lower temperatures using precipation reactions from high purity chemical solutions...
at Coors Porcelain since 1954, was appointed manager of can production in 1963, and led it to profitability. The can operation eventually outgrew the Porcelain building and moved into its present location east of the brewery in 1966.
Coors Brewing CompanyThe Coors Brewing Company is a regional division of the world's fifth-largest brewing company, the Molson Coors Brewing Company. According to the Molson-Coors website, the division is the third-largest brewer in the U.S...
reorganized its can operations into a joint venture with the
Ball Corp.Ball Corporation , originally Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Company, is an American company famous for producing glass canning jars. Founded in 1880, it is currently headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado...
in 2002, known as Rocky Mountain Metal Container LLC. CoorsTek began developing ceramic tooling for beverage can machinery in the 1990s.
On January 22, 2009, the original Coors can plant was named an ASM Historical Landmark by the Board of Trustees of
ASM InternationalASM International, formerly known as the American Society for Metals, is a professional organization for materials scientists and engineers working with metals....
, for its role in ushering in the age of recyclable aluminum beverage containers. The date marked the 50th anniversary of Coors' first aluminum can. The building is on the southwest corner of the CoorsTek complex at 600 Ninth St in Golden.
Ceramic technology and company growth after WW2
The company gradually diversified its lines of
technical ceramicsCeramic forming techniques are ways of forming ceramic shapes. This can be used to make everyday tableware from teapots, to engineering ceramics such as computer parts. Methods for forming ceramic powders into complex shapes are desirable in many areas of technology...
before and especially after World War II. Coors greatly expanded its product lines, reduced scrap and accelerated production with the aid of cold isostatic pressing in the 1940s, tape casting and
hot isostatic pressingHot isostatic pressing is a manufacturing process used to reduce the porosity of metals and influence the density of many ceramic materials. This improves the mechanical properties, workability and ceramic density....
in the 1950s, and multilayer ceramic
capacitorA capacitor or condenser is a passive electronic component consisting of a pair of conductors separated by a dielectric. When a voltage potential difference exists between the conductors, an electric field is present in the dielectric. This field stores energy and produces a mechanical force...
s in the 1960s. High-alumina (85 to 99.9% Al
2O
3) ceramics replaced
porcelainPorcelain is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials, generally including clay in the form of kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between and...
in many thermomechanical, electrical and chemical applications. Coors engineers Vlad Wolkodoff and Bob Weaver invented fully dense, glass-free 99.5+% Al
2O
3 ceramics in 1964, useful for many applications where porcelain is deficient. Growth in the 1970s enabled Coors to build an electronic ceramics plant east of Golden in 1970, and its first facility outside of Golden, an electronic substrate plant in
Grand Junction, COThe City of Grand Junction is the largest city in western Colorado. It is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous town or city of Mesa County, Colorado, United States. Grand Junction is situated west-southwest of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver. According to...
, a few years later. Coors made its first purchase of a competitor when it bought Wilbanks International Inc. (originally Far West Industrial Ceramics) of
Hillsboro, ORHillsboro is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and is the county seat of Washington County. Lying in the Tualatin Valley on the west side of the Portland metropolitan area, the city is home to many high-technology companies, such as Intel, that comprise what has become known as...
, in 1973. Coors began making
silicon carbideSilicon carbide , also known as carborundum, is a compound of silicon and carbon with a chemical formula SiC. It occurs in nature as the extremely rare mineral moissanite. Silicon carbide powder has been mass-produced since 1893 for use as an abrasive...
,
silicon nitrideSilicon nitride is a chemical compound of silicon and nitrogen. It is a hard ceramic having high strength over a broad temperature range, moderate thermal conductivity, low coefficient of thermal expansion, moderately high elastic modulus, and unusually high fracture toughness for a ceramic...
,
spinelThe spinels are any of a class of minerals of general formulation A
2+B
23+O
42- which crystallise in the cubic crystal system, with the oxide anions arranged in a cubic close-packed lattice and the cations A and B occupying some or all of the...
, zirconia and several other ceramic products by the mid-1980s.
The Joe Coors era
Joseph “Joe” Coors, Sr.Joseph Coors, Sr. , was the grandson of Adolph Coors and president of Coors Brewing Company. -Birth and education:...
(1917–2003), third son of Adolph II, joined Porcelain in 1940. He was later promoted to president, and became a member of the board of directors and an executive of Adolph Coors Company as well. Joe was named an Honorary Member of the
American Ceramic SocietyThe American Ceramic Society is a non-profit professional organization for the ceramics community, with a focus on scientific research, emerging technologies, and current applications in which ceramic materials are a key element...
, one of three charter members of that group, in 1985.
Coors Porcelain becomes Coors Ceramics
Coors Porcelain was renamed
Coors Ceramics Company in 1986, shortly after Joseph Coors, Jr., succeeded Derald Whiting as president. At that point, porcelain was only a small part of the company's output. High-alumina ceramics were and still are the company's bread and butter. Joe Jr., a mathematician and
quality engineerCQE is an abbreviation for "Certified Quality Engineer", a certification given by the American Society for Quality. These engineers are professionally educated in quality engineering and quality control....
, had been the president of Wilbanks and the vice-president for quality at Coors Porcelain prior to his promotion.
Chaired professor and ceramic research at CSM
The widow of Herman Coors endowed the Colorado Center for Advanced Ceramics (CCAC) at the Colorado School of Mines in 1988, and established the H.F. Coors Distinguished Professor of Ceramic Engineering chair. Dennis W. Readey left the
Ohio State UniversityOhio State University is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the largest single-campus university in the United States. Ohio State is currently ranked by U.S...
to become the first Coors Professor and director of CCAC. Readey, a Fellow of the
American Ceramic SocietyThe American Ceramic Society is a non-profit professional organization for the ceramics community, with a focus on scientific research, emerging technologies, and current applications in which ceramic materials are a key element...
(ACerS), served as president of ACerS in 1991-2, and was named a Distinguished Life Member of ACerS in 2002. Upon his retirement, Readey was succeeded as Coors Professor by Nigel Sammes, and as director of CCAC by Ivar Reimanis. W. Grover Coors, a brother of CoorsTek president John Coors, is a research professor in CCAC.
The Coors empire separates
Adolph Coors Company became a holding company in 1989, with
Coors Brewing CompanyThe Coors Brewing Company is a regional division of the world's fifth-largest brewing company, the Molson Coors Brewing Company. According to the Molson-Coors website, the division is the third-largest brewer in the U.S...
as its largest subsidiary. The non-brewing subsidiaries were spun off at the end of 1992 under a new holding company, ACX Technologies, Inc., with Bill Coors as chairman of both holding companies. The key subsidiaries of ACX were Coors Ceramics Co.; Graphic Packaging Corporation, with Joe Jr.’s younger brother J.H. “Jeff” Coors as chairman and president; Golden Technologies Company (GTC), a collection of R&D projects headed by a former Wilbanks executive; and Golden Aluminum Company. Most of the ceramics-related GTC projects were folded into Coors Ceramics, while others were sold to investors or shut down with the demise of GTC in the late 1990s. Golden Aluminum was sold to
Alcoathe river: Alcoa RiverAlcoa, Inc. is the world's third largest producer of aluminum, behind Rio Tinto Alcan and Rusal. From its operational headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Alcoa conducts operations in 44 countries...
in the mid-1990s, and is now an independent remelter and rolling mill in Fort Lupton, CO. Graphic Pkg merged with Riverwood International Corp. in 2003 and moved its headquarters to Marietta, GA, but still has a plant in Golden and supplies paperboard packaging for Coors beer. ACX and Adolph Coors Co. had many common stockholders including the Coors family, but were otherwise entirely independent of one another. Coors Ceramics Co. was no longer affiliated with the Coors brewery. Coors Ceramics' headquarters moved from 600 Ninth St in Golden proper to a new building at 16000 Table Mountain Pkwy in an unincorporated area northeast of Golden.
Coors Ceramics becomes CoorsTek
In 2000, ACX was dissolved and Coors Ceramics became an independent, publicly traded company under the name of
CoorsTek, Inc. CoorsTek was traded on the
NASDAQThe National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, known as NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. It is the largest electronic screen-based equity securities trading market in the United States...
under the symbol CRTK. Joe Jr. retired as chairman and president of CoorsTek in 2003, and was succeeded by his younger brother John. Keystone Holdings LLC, a
trustA Investment trust is a form of collective investment found mostly in the United Kingdom. Investment trusts are closed-end funds and are constituted as public limited companies.- Organisation :...
of the Coors family, bought the stock it did not already own, and took the company private once again.
Products and services
- 99.8% alumina tubing, crucible
A crucible is a heat-resistant container in which materials can be heated to very high temperatures. The use of crucibles to manufacture Crucible steel, introduced in England in the eighteenth century, was an important part of the Industrial Revolution....
s and thermocoupleA thermocouple or thermocouple thermometer is a junction between two different metals that produces a voltage related to a temperature difference. Thermocouples are a widely used type of temperature sensor for measurement and control and can also be used to convert heat into electric power...
sheaths
- Analytical laboratories specializing in ceramic products
- Cera-Check beams for coordinate measuring machines
- Ceramic armor
- Ceramic powder preparation
- Cera-Slide paper-making tooling
- Coors USA laboratory wares
- Cyclone
Cyclonic separation is a method of removing particulates from an air, gas or water stream, without the use of filters, through vortex separation. Rotational effects and gravity are used to separate mixtures of solids and fluids....
liners and wear-resistant tiles for effluent separation and mineral dressing
- Electronic substrates and ceramic dual in-line package
In microelectronics, a dual in-line package , sometimes called a DIL package, is an electronic device package with a rectangular housing and two parallel rows of electrical connecting pins. The pins are all parallel, point downward, and extend past the bottom plane of the package at least enough...
s
- Exhaust port liners and other engine components
- Grinding media
- Kiln furniture, heat exchanger
A heat exchanger is a device built for efficient heat transfer from one medium to another. The media may be separated by a solid wall, so that they never mix, or they may be in direct contact. They are widely used in space heating, refrigeration, air conditioning, power plants, chemical plants,...
s, refractories
- Metallized waveguides and stand-off insulators for electric power transmission and telecommunications
- Micro-filtration devices for medical applications
- Pump plungers and seal rings
- Valve plates for washerless faucets
- Wire-drawing capstans
A capstan is a rotating machine used to apply force to ropes, cables, and hawsers, commonly, though not exclusively, in a maritime setting.- History :...
and diesA die is a specialized tool used in manufacturing industries to cut, shape and form a wide variety of products and components. Like molds and templates, dies are generally customized and uniquely matched to the product they are used to create...
- Zirconia oxygen sensor
An oxygen sensor, or lambda sensor, is an electronic device that measures the proportion of oxygen in the gas or liquid being analyzed. It was developed by Robert Bosch GmbH during the late 1960s under supervision by Dr. Günter Bauman...
s
Subsidiaries and Outlying Operations
| Austin, Houston and Odessa, TX |
Petrochemical, oil and gas hardware |
| Benton, AR |
Formerly Alumina Ceramics, Inc. |
| El Segundo, Fremont and Ventura, CA |
Formerly Tetrafluor |
| Glenrothes, Fife, Scotland |
Formerly VZS-Seagoe |
| Glenrothes, Fife, Scotland |
Thick- and thin-film substrates |
| Grand Junction, CO |
C5 Medical Werks |
| Grand Junction, CO |
Thick-film substrates |
| Gumi City, Korea |
CoorsTek Korea |
| Hillsboro, OR |
Formerly Wilbanks International, Inc. |
| Kyungbook, Korea |
Formerly Doo Young Semitek Co., Ltd. |
| Norman, OK |
Formerly RI Ceramics Co. |
| Oak Ridge, TN |
Formerly Coors Technical Ceramics Co. |
| Ogdensburg, NY |
Coorstek Armor Solutions (was DEW) |
| Ottawa, ON, Canada |
DEW Engineering and Development Ltd. |
| Red Deer, AB, Canada |
Petrochemical, oil and gas hardware |
Former subsidiaries
| Alpha Optical Systems Inc. |
Ocean Springs, MS |
| Ceram |
El Cajon, CA |
| Ceramicon Designs |
Golden, CO |
| Coban Industrial Ltda. |
Rio Claro, SP, Brazil |
| Coors Biomedical Co. |
Lakewood, CO |
| Coors Ceramics Asia-Pacific |
Singapore |
| Coors Components, Inc. |
Broomfield, CO |
| Coors Electronic Package Co. |
Chattanooga, TN |
| MicroLithics Corp. |
Golden, CO |
| RMS |
Lawrence, PA |
| Royal Worcester Industrial Ceramics |
Tonyrefail, Wales |
Presidents
- Adolph Coors I (1920-1929)
- Joe Coors, Sr.
- Derald Whiting ( -1985)
- Joe Coors, Jr. (1985–2000)
- John K. Coors (2000- )
External links