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Ball history
Ball company history timeline
In 1880, the Ball brothers established a company that would eventually become an international success story.
In 1884, the brothers began making glass home-canning jars, the product that established Ball as a household name.
On February 13, 1886, the company incorporated as Ball Brothers Manufacturing Company.
About the same time the factory in Buffalo was destroyed by fire in 1886, the brothers began to consider moving their business closer to natural gas supplies.
In 1888 the company opened its first glass manufacturing facility in Muncie.
By 1889 the Ball company's headquarters and its glass and metal manufacturing operations had moved to Muncie.
The company's F. C. Ball machine, patented in 1898, introduced mass production into its glass-blowing process and gave it a competitive market advantage.
By 1905 the company was producing 60 million canning jars per year and had acquired other glass manufacturers, expanding its operations to include seven factories in addition to its main facilities at Muncie.
In a continuation of the company's difficulties in Muncie, workers organized with Local 200 (Glass Workers) of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) at the main facility, went on strike in March 1910, with the strikers demanding wage increases.
Renamed the Ball Brothers Company in 1922, it is best known for manufacturing fruit jars, lids, and related products for home canning.
The Ball company faced additional challenges and opportunities during the Great Depression and World War II. Prior to 1933, Ball was the largest domestic manufacturer of home canning jars.
The final decision, which was handed down in 1947, restricted Ball's ability to acquire other glass manufacturers and other businesses producing glass-making machinery without prior court approval.
In 1949 decreasing demand for canning jars caused the company to suffer its first net operating loss.
In the 1950’s the company hired a small engineering firm in Boulder, Colarado to develop a device that would more accurately weigh glass batch materials.
· The 1956 formation of Ball Brothers Research Corporation.
The launching of Sputnik by the Soviets in 1958 ushered in the Space Age and created many new opportunities in the field of aerospace.
The company began manufacturing aerospace equipment in 1959.
The 1960’s were years of unparalleled growth in the container industry, especially in the consumer beverage area.
Ball, Edmund F., "From Fruit Jars to Satellites: The Story of Ball Brothers Company, Incorporated," Newcomen Society in North America, 1960.
The company began manufacturing aerospace equipment in 1959. Its OSO-1 (Orbiting Solar Observatory) satellite, designed and built for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with $1.4 million in grants, launched into space on March 7, 1962, at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
An explosion killed three workers and damaged the company's OSO-2 satellite in 1964.
Plastipak Holdings history, profile and corporate video Founded in 1967, Plastipak is still owned and run by members of the Young family.
Renamed the Ball Corporation in 1969, it acquired Jeffco Manufacturing Company, a maker of recyclable aluminum beverage cans, and became the largest producer of recyclable beverage cans in the world.
In the mid-1970’s Ball also developed and introduced Freshware food containers.
In 1972, Fisher acquired a Singapore-based petroleum equipment company that built and sold production gear and provided engineering expertise to oil firms in the Pacific.
Ball Corporation's stock went public on July 13, 1972. It became a publicly traded stock company on the New York Stock Exchange in 1973.
The stock began trading at $26 per share on the NYSE on December 17, 1973, using the trading symbol BLL.
Then, in 1974, Fisher acquired a small California computer company.
Fisher wasted no time in selling it in 1976 for 40 cents per share.
Birmingham, Frederic Alexander, Ball Corporation: The First Century, Indianapolis: Curtis Publishing Co., 1980.
In 1986, Ball entered into a joint venture with Guangzhou M. C. Packaging in China.
Ball Corporation procured $180 million in defense contracts alone by 1987.
In 1992, the company acquired Kerr Group Inc.'s commercial glass assets for $68.4 million, which helped boost Ball's share of that market.
· The acquisition of Heekin Can, Inc. in March 1993.
When Altrista Corporation became a separate company in April 1993, Ball shareholders received one share of Alltrista stock for every four shares of Ball stock.
By 1993, that business ranked as one of that country’s most successful foreign joint ventures, and Ball had established five beverage can manufacturing plants in China, one in Taiwan, and one in Hong Kong.
· The establishment of Ball's plastic container operations in 1994.
Ball’s emphasis on quality has helped it compete well in the highly competitive can market: by 1994, the company was the third largest supplier to the combined United StatesCanadian food can market.
The company launched its first plastic container development in 1994, originally basing this operation in Smyrna, Georgia.
These changes were overseen by George Sissel, a longtime company veteran who had become CEO in 1994 after Davis left.
· The creation and sale of Ball-Foster Glass Container Co., a joint venture glass company with Group Saint Gobain, in September 1995.
Koenig, Bill, "Ball Corp. of Muncie, Ind., Selling Stake in Ball-Foster Glass," Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, September 17, 1996.
Ball sold its remaining interest in Ball-Foster to Group Saint Gobain in 1996, and exited the glass business.
The 1997 purchase of M.C. Packaging Ltd. made Ball China's largest supplier of cans.
· The acquisition of the metal beverage container assets of Reynolds Metals Company in 1998.
In 1998 the Ball Corporation moved its corporate headquarters from Muncie to Broomfield, Colorado, where its oversees global operations as a manufacturer of metal food and beverage containers, as well as a manufacturer of equipment and supplier of services to the aerospace industry.
In 2000, Ball joined ConAgra in a metal food container joint venture, Ball Western Can Company LLC, which was based in Oakdale, California.
Altrista was renamed Jarden Corporation in 2001.
Germany's Schmalbach-Lubeca AG, a $1 billion metal beverage canning company, was acquired in 2002 in a deal worth about $855 million (EUR 900 million). Ball Packaging Europe was created around this acquisition.
In 2004, the company began building an $80 million aluminum can plant near Belgrade to serve the Eastern European market.
The company's packaging technology development operations were consolidated at a site in Westminster, Colorado in 2004.
Ball began 2006 by announcing two major acquisitions.
"The History of Ball: From Wood-Jacketed Tins to Aerospace," Broomfield, Colorado: Ball Corporation, 2006.
Marcus, Alfred A., Big Winners and Big Losers: The 4 Secrets of Long-Term Business Success and Failure, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., 2006.
Originally launched as a Kickstarter campaign in 2011, the reCAP Mason Jar Lid offers a contemporary upgrade to John Mason’s two-piece lid system (Rzepecki). Before this design, there were no single-piece, airtight, plastic storage lids available for Mason Jars.
On November 19, 2015, Rzepecki patented several add-ons for the original reCAP Mason Jar Lid (US 2015032955A1), including the FLIP, POUR, ADAPTA, PUMP, and TAP Caps.
Ball Reports Strong First Quarter 2021 Results
"Ball Corporation ." International Directory of Company Histories. . Retrieved June 21, 2022 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-magazines/ball-corporation-0
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Ball may also be known as or be related to BALL CORP, Ball, Ball Corporation, Ball Metalpack, LLC and Ball Corporation/Ball Aerospace.