CSR Limited
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Company type | Public |
---|---|
ASX: CSR | |
Industry | Building materials |
Founded | 1855Sydney, Australia | in
Founder | Edward Knox |
Headquarters | , |
Area served | Australia, New Zealand, United States |
Key people |
|
Products | Plasterboard, bricks, insulation, aluminium |
Services | Construction |
Revenue | A$2.32 billion (2019)[1] |
A$265 million (2019) | |
A$146 million (2021) | |
Number of employees | ~3,000 (2021) |
Website | csr |
CSR Limited is a major
Founded in Sydney in 1855 as the Colonial Sugar Refining Company at the
The company began to diversify into building products as early as 1942, with the construction of a plaster mill in Sydney, and in 1947 the company began manufacturing
In 2024, French multinational Saint-Gobain agreed to acquire CSR for A$4.5 billion (US$2.95 billion).[3]
Sugar
Early sugar refining operations
Founded in Sydney by
Expansion into central milling
By the late 1860s, relying on imported raw sugar was no longer financially viable for the company and Knox decided to establish his own supplies by establishing centralised mills to crush sugarcane grown by farmers in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales. Raw sugar produced from the Southgate, Chatsworth, Darkwater and Harwood mills on the Macleay, Clarence and Richmond Rivers was transported by ship to the company's refineries in Sydney and Melbourne. This proved very profitable and CSR was able to retain a near monopoly of sugar refining in the Australian colonies. In 1880-81, CSR further consolidated their milling operations by the construction of the high-output Condong and Broadwater mills also located in northern New South Wales.[5]
Queensland and Fiji plantations
In 1880, Knox handed over the management of CSR to his second son Edward William Knox who immediately began a rapid expansion of the company's operations into Queensland and Fiji. E.W. Knox oversaw the transition of the company into owning and running large sugar plantations in these regions which were serviced on-site by high capacity mills also owned by CSR.[6]
Queensland
The Queensland Government passed an Act in 1881 allowing CSR to acquire large amounts of land in the north of the colony and to invest £500,000 in establishing sugar plantations in these areas.
By the 1890s, Knox decided to abandon the plantation system in Queensland and return to the central mill method used in its New South Wales operations. CSR subdivided the Victoria and Homebush estates into small farms which it sold or leased to white farmers who would sell their cane to CSR to be processed at its nearby mills.[6]
Fiji
In 1880, E.W. Knox expanded the company's sugar plantation and milling systems to Fiji with a large estate and mill being established at
Later sugar operations
CSR constructed further large refineries and mills in Australasia including the Chelsea Sugar Refinery built near Auckland in 1884, a large refining complex at Glanville, Adelaide in 1891 to process sugar from Mauritius, and the massive sugar mill at Lautoka in 1903.[14][6] In 1923, the Queensland state government signed an agreement with CSR to refine all of that state's sugar production, a monopoly that was to continue until 1989, 16 years after CSR had left Fiji. At that time, about 80% of production was exported.
CSR separated its sugar and energy businesses from its building products business in 2009, which resulted in the creation of
Sucrogen was sold to Singapore company Wilmar International in 2010.[15]
Construction and mining
In February 1980, CSR acquired construction and mining contractor
Wittenoom asbestos mine
Between 1948 and 1966, CSR operated mines at
]Despite warnings from the Western Australia Health Department and other health authorities in the early 1960s, CSR continued to operate the mine until 1966. The first court victory for the Wittenoom victims was in 1988, when Klaus Rabenault won his case against Midalco, a subsidiary of CSR that ran the mines. The judge ruled that CSR acted with 'continuing, conscious and contumelious' disregard for its workers' safety and that Rabenault should be awarded $426,000 by way of compensation and $250,000 in punitive damages.[20]
It is predicted that by 2020, almost a third of the people who passed through Wittenoom during the mines' operating years would be diagnosed with a fatal disease caused by their dangerous exposures to blue asbestos. This would be an estimated 2,000 cases totalling costs of A$500 million in damages from CSR.[21]
In the 1980s CSR was pursued by victims of asbestosis caused by the operation of its Midalco subsidiary in Western Australia. By 1988, 258 damage-related suits had been taken against CSR, though only a handful of cases had been heard in the courts. In May that year a Victorian court made an award of A$680,000 against Midalco to a former worker, after he contracted the fatal lung cancer, mesothelioma; and in August, lesser amounts were awarded to other workers, against CSR itself (22). Finally in 1989 and the following year, a settlement was made.
Meanwhile, CSR and the State Government Insurance Commission of Western Australia were engaged in a dispute as to which of them was responsible for payment of the damages to the workforce and their dependents, with CSR arguing that it was not responsible for liabilities sustained by its Midalco subsidiary. The two bodies finally reached agreement in early 1989 to share the costs of compensation (23). Fifteen million dollars would be paid out by each of them to cover damages for the seven-year period of operation of the Wittenoom mine, with an additional total of A$20 million payable to claimants who worked there before 1959 (23). By the end of that year, researchers at the Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre, and the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, in Perth had estimated that a further 692 workers would fall victim to mesothelioma with another 183 cases of lung cancer to be expected. They predicted another 432 successful claims would be made, in addition to the 356 already accepted (24).[22]
At the beginning of 1990, 322 workers had been compensated (25). A few months later CSR made a partial re-entry into mining, when it bought up 48 quarries from the US ARC subsidiary of the British Hanson corporation. It also pulled out of a plasterboard joint venture with Redland Plasterboard (established in 1987) while retaining its Australian and New Zealand interests, through Monier PGH—a company with around half of the Australian roofing tile market (26).
The
The song "Blue Sky Mine" by Australian rock band Midnight Oil is about the disaster.
See also
References
Notes
- ^ "CSR Financial Results" (PDF). Csr.com.au. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 March 2015. Retrieved 9 May 2015.
- ^ "CSR to buy Pilkington Australasia for $690m". The Sydney Morning Herald. 29 June 2007. Archived from the original on 11 August 2022. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
- ^ "France's Saint-Gobain strikes agreement to buy Australia's CSR". Reuters. 26 February 2024.
- ^ "Colonial Sugar Company's Office". Australia's Past Present. 29 May 2015. Archived from the original on 23 December 2021. Retrieved 23 December 2021.
- ^ ISBN 9780643091542. Archivedfrom the original on 11 August 2022. Retrieved 23 December 2021.
- ^ a b c d e f Lowndes, A.G. (1956). South Pacific Enterprise. Sydney: Angus & Robertson.
- The Brisbane Courier. Vol. XLI, no. 8, 768. Queensland, Australia. 20 February 1886. p. 3. Archivedfrom the original on 11 August 2022. Retrieved 30 December 2021 – via National Library of Australia.
- Toowoomba Chronicle and Darling Downs General Advertiser. No. 3328. Queensland, Australia. 9 May 1885. p. 11. Archivedfrom the original on 11 August 2022. Retrieved 30 December 2021 – via National Library of Australia.
- The Brisbane Courier. Vol. XL, no. 8, 600. Queensland, Australia. 4 August 1885. p. 6. Archivedfrom the original on 11 August 2022. Retrieved 30 December 2021 – via National Library of Australia.
- The Brisbane Courier. Vol. XLI, no. 8, 770. Queensland, Australia. 23 February 1886. p. 3. Retrieved 30 December 2021 – via National Library of Australia.
- ^ "Pacific Islanders' Compensation Court". The Queenslander. Vol. XXIX, no. 545. Queensland, Australia. 6 March 1886. p. 368. Retrieved 31 December 2021 – via National Library of Australia.
- ^ Docker, Edward Wybergh (1970). The Blackbirders. Sydney: Angus & Robertson.
- Clarence and Richmond Examiner and New England Advertiser. Vol. XXV, no. 2086. New South Wales, Australia. 29 August 1885. p. 3. Archivedfrom the original on 11 August 2022. Retrieved 1 January 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
- ^ Hunter, James. "Colonial Sugar Refinery, Glanville". SA History Hub. History Trust of South Australia. Archived from the original on 16 August 2019. Retrieved 16 August 2019.
- ^ [1] Archived 23 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine
- Canberra Times1 December 1979 page 20
- ^ CSR Offer Accepted - Thiess directors give up fight Archived 29 January 2020 at the Wayback Machine Canberra Times 12 January 1980 page 16
- ^ Sale to Thiess Archived 11 August 2022 at the Wayback Machine Canberra Times 3 April 1981 page 16
- ^ "SLI - Management of Dust Hazards and Diseases - The Wittenoom Disaster". Archived from the original on 31 December 2006. Retrieved 9 May 2015.
- ^ p119. Hills, Ben. Blue Murder (1989)
- ^ p144-145. Hills, Ben. Blue Murder (1989)
- ^ [2] Archived 29 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "::Adsa::". Asbestosdiseases.org.au. 25 September 1961. Archived from the original on 9 October 2007. Retrieved 9 May 2015.
Further reading
- Hansen, Jim (2004). CSR Shipping, 1880-2003. Auckland, NZ: H.J. Hansen. ISBN 0473098156.
External links
- CSR corporate site
- Early history of CSR in Sydney: "Colonial Sugar Refining Co Ltd". Dictionary of Sydney. Dictionary of Sydney Trust. 2008. Retrieved 16 October 2015..