Babcock and Wilcox Limited

Babcock & Wilcox Ltd is the British subsiduary of the American Babcock & Wilcox; George Babcock and Stephen Wilcox had established the partnership Babcock, Wilcox & Co in 1867 to manufacture and market Wilcox's patent boiler and in 1881 the company was incorporated in America as The Babcock & Wilcox Company; the same year the company opened a sales office in Glasgow and by 1883 boilers were being made by sub-contractors in Scotland; a British company, Babcock & Wilcox Ltd, was formed in 1891 to cover operations in the world outside of America; they rapidly became a leader in both land-based and marine boilers, developing a large defence business during the first and second world wars, producing tanks and munitions in addition to their naval boiler business; from the 1960s onwards the group became increasingly involved in nuclear energy; by 1975 Babcock & Wilcox Ltd employed approximately 37,000 people world wide, with 22,000 of these in the United Kingdom, and was involved in a large and diverse range of enginering operations; in 1979 Babcock & Wilcox Ltd became Babcock International Ltd and in 1982 a public limited company as Babcock International plc; considerable restructuring took place in the 1980s and 1990s until by 2002 the company had rationalised and changed its focus from energy and boiler making to providing services to the British Ministry of Defence.