Chase Brass and Copper Company
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| Traded as | BRSS |
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| Founded | Waterbury, Connecticut, 1876 |
| Founder | Henry Sabin Chase |
| Headquarters | Montpelier, OH, USA |
| Products | Brass rod, ingots and engineered products |
| Parent | KPS Capital Partners |
| Website | www |
Chase Brass is a leading manufacturer of brass rod, ingot and engineered products in the U.S. Located in Montpelier, Ohio, Chase employs over 200 hourly employees who are represented by the United Steelworkers Union (USW) Local 7248, and 98 salaried employees.
Founded in 1876, in Waterbury, Connecticut, it was one of the brass manufacturers that contributed to Waterbury's nickname "The Brass City". One of the largest brassworks in Waterbury, Chase left the city in 1975.
The company was incorporated in 1876, with Henry Sabin Chase as its founder and first President.
In 1929 the company built its first midwestern plant, in Euclid, Ohio. That same year Chase became a subsidiary of Kennecott Utah Copper, which was the largest producer of copper in the U.S., and Ten East 40th St, New York City, the Chase Tower, was finished and named after its first tenant, Chase Brass and Copper. It is now known as the Mercantile Building.
Standard Oil of Ohio (now BP America) acquired Kennecott in 1981 and thus acquired Chase. In 1988, the sheet division was sold to 500 employees of the company through an employee stock ownership plan; the new firm was named North Coast Brass & Copper Co. Only 40 Chase employees were left in the Cleveland area, at its Solon headquarters, though the firm still had two other divisions, in Montpelier, OH, and Shelby, NC.
In 1988, BP was discouraged from selling Chase to TBG Inc., a New York-based manufacturing concern, with a threatened anti-trust action. The Justice Department warned TBG that it intended to file a civil suit to block its proposed $127 million acquisition of Chase Brass. In 1990, BP finally sold the brass rod manufacturing operations in Montpelier, Ohio, the last remaining business unit of its Chase Brass and Copper Co. subsidiary. The rod mill, which then employed about 230 workers, made brass products for plumbing and other uses.
In 1997, the board of directors and shareholders of Chase Brass Industries, Inc. legally changed its name to Chase Industries Inc. The Company's New York Stock Exchange symbol remained "CSI." In 2000, Chase joined a consortium of specialty metal producers, the MetalSpectrum Partnership, to market metals on-line.
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Wikipedia