HISTORICAL PROFILE
HISTORICAL PROFILE
With 140 years of history in the boiler
industry, the roots of the John Thompson
company go back even farther to 1824.
In that year William Thompson set up
a business near Bilston in the north of
England, to build iron boats.
In 1946 the parent company took full
control of the South African operation,
established its own offices and undertook
its own installation and erection work for
its watertube and firetube shell boilers.
The business continued to flourish and
in 1954, in a merger with local company
Albert de Jong (Pty) Ltd, the first John
Thompson boiler was manufactured at its
plant near Cape Town. Today this is one of
the largest heavy engineering facilities in
South Africa, focusing on the world-competitive design, manufacture, construction
and maintenance of industrial boilers and
their combustion equipment.
In 1870 this business moved to
Wolverhampton and five years later
branched out into the manufacture of
Lancashire boilers.
From these early beginnings the
company’s product development
progressed into economic-type boilers,
into watertube boilers and from there
into steam generators for nuclear power
stations. Expansion also included other
fields of engineering.
John Thompson (Wolverhampton) first
came to South Africa in 1935 and through
an agency agreement soon established
a useful order book. Recognising
the market potential the UK parent
established John Thompson (South
Africa) (Pty) Ltd in 1937.
The company operated as a sales and
contracting organisation, purchasing
equipment from Wolverhampton as well
as local sources, and subcontracting the
erection work.
In 1960 John Thompson Africa (Pty) Ltd
was established under the control of
the UK parent. With the acquisition of
Cochran Boilers, another long-established
business, in 1969 the John ThompsonCochran Group became Europe’s leading manufacturer of shell boilers. It also
started a new era of co-operation with
South Africa.
The next development came in 1970 when
Clarke Chapman, based on Tyneside,
merged with John Thompson and created
the Thompson-Cochran Boiler Division.
In 1986, John Thompson Africa became
the first company in Africa to be granted
ASME certificates and code stamps for
Power Boilers, Pressure Vessels and Pressure Piping and in 1992, their quality management system was approved in accordance with ISO 9001.
With the acquisition of NEI Africa Ltd
by Alstom South Africa in 2001, John
Thompson Africa became a business division of Alstom Power with a new name –
John Thompson Boilers.
In 2002 ALSTOM restructured its operations in South Africa and John Thompson
Boilers became a division of Alstom SA
(Pty) Ltd.
In 2004 Alstom South Africa acquired 90%
of its shares from Alstom Europe and became a South African owned company
with a 50% BEE shareholding. At the same
time John Thompson Boilers became
Alstom John Thompson (Pty) Ltd.
In 2008 the shareholding in Alstom South
Africa was restructured when a consortium acquired its total equity and its legal
name changed to Alstom Electrical Industries (Pty) Ltd.
In 2009 Alstom Electrical Industries, which
previously shared its name and logo with
the Alstom group, rebranded itself with a
new name and corporate identity ACTOM. John Thompson then became a
division of ACTOM (Pty) Ltd.
The mergers continued: Clarke Chapman
and Reyrolle Parsons formed Northern
Engineering Ltd (NEI) in 1977 and 12
years later NEI merged with Rolls-Royce
to create the Rolls-Royce Industrial Power
Group, which included John Thompson
Africa and International Combustion
Africa Ltd (ICAL).
The cooperative partnership with
Alstom continues with ACTOM being an
Alstom technology partner. ACTOM also
continues to have exclusive distribution,
technology and representation rights for
Southern Africa with Areva T&D and maintains links to their business units in
Europe.
JOHN THOMPSON. A division of ACTOM (Pty) Ltd
Cape Town Head Office
Johannesburg Office
Durban Office
PO Box 129, Bellville, RSA PO Box 8382, Edenglen, RSA PO Box 32292, Mobeni, RSA www.johnthompson.co.za
Tel:+27(0)21 959-8400 Tel:+27 (0)11 392-0900 Tel:+27 (0)31 408-9700 Fax:+27(0)21 959-8545
Fax:+27 (0)11 392-0938
Fax:+27 (0)31 408-9722
e-mail:info@johnthompson.co.za