History

Bigelow-Liptak Corporation and Bigelow-Liptak of Canada were acquired by The Stebbins Engineering and Manufacturing Company of Watertown, New York in 1992.  Stebbins is a specialty masonry contractor with over one hundred years experience in the field of chemical resistant tanks and linings, primarily for the pulp and paper industry.  They are also now well known in the power industry for the supply and installation of scrubber systems for pulverized coal fired boilers.

Operating now as a division of Canadian Stebbins Engineering & Mfg. Co. ULC, our headquarters are in Oakville, Ontario, with sales offices also in Leetsdale (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania.  This subsidiary is capable of completing projects ranging from small construction jobs to multi-million dollar engineering and construction contracts.  The largest recent single contract was approximately ten million dollars.

Bigelow-Liptak Corporation was originally incorporated in 1927 with the merger of the Bigelow Arch Company of Detroit and Liptak Firebrick Arch Company of Minneapolis, as a direct subsidiary of A.P. Green Refractories Company.  Bigelow-Liptak of Canada was incorporated in Toronto in 1940, as a subsidiary of the Corporation.

During the early years, both companies were strictly concerned with the sale of suspended refractory arch and wall construction.  While still maintaining this phase of the business, Bigelow-Liptak has long since ceased to be just an arch and wall company, with the sale of these products currently representing only a small portion of our business.

Refractory construction activities commenced after the Second World War primarily in the petrochemical industry.  While the majority of these offices have been recently sold, we continue to offer refractory construction and maintenance services in the United States through our Pittsburgh office.   Nevertheless, Bigelow-Liptak remains pre-eminent in several specialized areas of refractory expertise, including linings for secondary reformers and waste heat boilers for methanol and ammonia plants, as well as complete transfer lines for these processes.

Complete furnace designs, as opposed to only refractory enclosures, were initially offered in the field of special moist fuel furnaces for burning bagasse in the sugar cane industry, followed shortly thereafter by our unique coal fired furnaces to generate hot gases for drying coal in coal preparation plants.  As gas and oil replaced coal in the sixties, Bigelow cylindrical hot air furnaces, utilizing our patented air-inlet air-cooled suspended refractory construction, became an industry standard and remains so today.

Commencing in the 1950’s, Bigelow-Liptak’s engineering activities and capabilities have gradually expanded.  For more than four decades, we have furnished not only the units described above, but more complete and complex systems in such diversified industries as glass, secondary metals, aluminium, coal process and petrochemical.

Through the seventies, Bigelow-Liptak sold a considerable amount of equipment into the glass and ceramics industry, to such companies as PPG, Ford Motor Company, Corning Glass Works and the like.  These projects included the design, supply and installation of high temperature roller hearths, decorating lehrs, float glass annealing lehrs and gas hearth tempering furnaces.

Coinciding with these activities, Bigelow-Liptak became well known at the same time interval in certain specialized segments of engineered combustion systems, such as the design and supply of incinerators and related combustion projects.  Bigelow-Liptak pioneered the regenerative incinerator, providing one of the first such units in North America in 1964 to an R.J. Reynolds plant in North Carolina.  Designed and installed for the destruction of noxious and corrosive tobacco fumes, this twin cell regenerative incinerator still operates successfully today.

In 1985, A.P. Green, our parent company at the time, took the first step in divesting themselves of their engineering and construction offices, by selling this present group to certain key employees.  Now part of Stebbins Engineering, Bigelow-Liptak continues to pursue its areas of expertise in specialized refractory design and engineering projects.

We maintain our own in-house expertise in all areas with complete engineering and drafting capabilities, panel design and checkout, refractory design and installation services, as well as a separate service department for start-up, commissioning and on-going service requirements for our equipment.

We trust the above provides you with some insight into our capabilities and experience.  To reiterate, we are not simply a furnace designer.  As a result of our heritage, we have an intimate knowledge of refractories, combustion and, most important, how combustion processes affect the life of refractory linings, the single largest area of maintenance after a furnace is placed into service.

We thank you for your interest in our organization and further assure you, we have the technology, experience and organization to provide quality equipment and services, with the necessary support team.