Who owns norton abrasives

As a brand of Saint-Gobain, a world leader in sustainable habitat, Norton offers the widest portfolio of grinding, cutting, blending, finishing and polishing solutions for all markets, materials and applications with the most advanced and affordable technology. So, as your needs evolve, our access to the global expertise of Saint-Gobain becomes even more valuable to making a difference in your day-to-day needs.

And, we don't have to look far for more localized expertise with our largest research center located right nearby in Northboro, MA. Norton is proud of our strong presence in your communities across the United States and Canada. Our 2, employees work in one of 8 facilities.

We're a global brand that delivers locally our employees are imagining, making, delivering, and selling products you use just around the corner. We More Put yourself in position to connect with more buyers and engineers looking for the products and services you offer. Stay up to date on industry news and trends, product announcements and the latest innovations. Home Supplier Discovery Company Profile. Norton Abrasives.

Print Feedback. Save Supplier Add To Shortlist. Company Description by Norton Abrasives As a brand of Saint-Gobain, a world leader in sustainable habitat, Norton offers the widest portfolio of grinding, cutting, blending, finishing and polishing solutions for all markets, materials and applications with the most advanced and affordable technology.

They also bought his company name. And, Norton Company was born. Norton has occupied that land ever since where two of the founders, John Jeppson and Milton Higgins, their sons, and grandsons, then managed the company until the s. What began as a tiny start-up, Norton began to grow rapidly.

By , it was one of the largest industrial companies in the United States. As it grew, it diversified into other industrial products and became a major multinational corporation for Abrasives manufacturing.

As Norton celebrated its th anniversary in , they also acquired Canada-based Carborundum Abrasives formerly Canada Sandpapers and built their research center in Northboro, MA. Acquisition of US-based Carborundum Abrasives was quick to follow in The Carborundum Abrasives brand is still well-known for its focused range of stock products for Industrial and Collision Repair applications. The Norton Company illustrates an interesting characteristic of emerging technologies: they often arise from unexpected quarters.

Cheape's history of Norton, he says, "Manufacturing fell to new people and not to firms like Pike [Company in New Hampshire] and the Cleveland Stone Company that dominated the production of natural abrasives.

The older enterprises had merely quarried and shaped their output. They lacked the manufacturing skills and experience required for the new product, including the proper selection of bond and abrasive, their mixture in correct proportions, and their bonding at proper temperatures. Frank Norton had owned a small pottery in Worcester since about He came from a family of potters in Bennington, Vermont, and had established a partnership with Frederick Hancock. Norton employed his three sons, his son-in-law, and several journeyman potters.

The stock in trade of F. Norton Stone Ware consisted of stoneware pots, bottles, pitchers, jars, and jugs. In a depression hit the United States economy, and several of Norton's potters started experimenting with grinding wheels as a way to generate income. Norton had seen a silicate grinding wheel produced by a company in Detroit, and the story goes that he bet his crew a bucket of beer that they could not duplicate it.

In a Swedish immigrant potter named Swen Pulson mixed emery with slip clay and fired three wheels at about degrees in the Norton kiln, one of which vitrified successfully. The clay melted and the emery bonded or fused with it. Frank Norton was unenthusiastic about the grinding wheels, mainly because he did not want to take a chance on an unproven product with an unknown market. Nevertheless, he patented Pulson's process in and started production in The wheels took a back seat to pottery and often were only fired when there were no pottery orders.

Frustrated, Pulson left the company. Norton hired another Swede, John Jeppson, to take his place. Jeppson soon became the acknowledged master at setting kilns and firing emery wheels. As business expanded, Norton hired Walter L. Messer to sell and promote the emery wheels throughout the country. He set up a distribution system that offered huge discounts and extremely easy to the point of laxness credit schemes, reasoning that because these wheels were consumed in use, easy terms would attract a loyal clientele.

By , largely as a result of Messer's efforts, the company was able to expand and hire more workers. By Norton's wheel business far surpassed pottery sales, and the company probably produced 10 percent of the entire industry output. Frank Norton never involved himself in the affairs of the outsiders he had hired to make emery wheels, and the success of the new enterprise caused friction.

In consideration of several factors, including ill health and debt, Norton was more than happy to sell. In order to raise the money and capitalize the new company, the three brought in four new partners--Milton P. Higgins, George I. Alden, Fred H. Daniels, and Horace Young.

The business style of the four owner-operators of the new firm--Jeppson, Allen, Higgins, and Alden--is described by Cheape as follows: "Like New England merchants in the seventeenth century, they believed that business required careful attention, enterprise with close scrutiny and risk avoidance, and growth by reinvestment while maintaining a strong cash reserve. In the partners built a new factory on the outskirts of Worcester, where land was relatively cheap, yet accessible to two rail lines.

To hold down costs, they recruited students from Worcester Polytechnic Institute to do the surveying, and in the partners forewent the yearly dividend. These parsimonious measures enabled the partners to virtually self-capitalize the project. Another indication of the partners' general mindset is apparent upon examination of the lack of compensation the partners bestowed upon themselves in these early days.

President Higgins and treasurer Alden were not paid a salary until , when it was clear the company would succeed.