British Insulated Callender's Cables

British Insulated Callender's Cables

Former type	Public
Industry	Building materials
Fate	Renamed
Successor	Balfour Beatty
Founded	1945
Defunct	2000
Headquarters	Helsby, UK
Products	Cables

British Insulated Callender's Cables (BICC) was a 20th-century British cable manufacturer and construction company, now renamed after former subsidiary Balfour Beatty.

British Insulated Callender's Cables was formed in 1945 by the merger of two long established cable firms, Callender's Cable & Construction Company Limited and British Insulated Cables. Subsidiaries could trace their roots back to submarine cable manufacturing on the Thames in the 1850s. The company was renamed BICC Ltd in 1975.

Callender's, originally an importer and refiner of bitumen for road construction, began manufacturing insulated cables in the 1880s at their Erith site on the Thames. British Insulated Cables had its origins in 1890 in the British Insulated Wire Company of Prescot, near Liverpool. Cable manufacture remained at both sites throughout the history of BICC.

Among the many early companies absorbed into BICC was the Greenwich firm Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company (Telcon). This made the 1865 and 1866 transatlantic cables and (as its forerunner Glass, Elliot & Co), the 1857 and 1858 cables.

Constituent companies of BICC played significant roles in construction of the British National Grid in the 1930s. Callender's for example constructed the 132 kV crossing of the Thames at Dagenham with overhead cables spanning 3060 feet (932m) between two 487 ft (148m) towers, and allowing 250 ft (76m) clearance for shipping. Companies including Glovers at Trafford Park and Callender's at Erith contributed to manufacturing PLUTO.

BICC had a world presence which was initially in the Commonwealth but in the 1980s and 1990s extended into mainland Europe and beyond. Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese companies gave entry in turn to South America and other parts of Africa. Disastrous investments in former East Germany and Russia helped bring the business to its knees at the same time as margins in every other part of the cable-making businesses came under attack.

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Wikipedia