Turner & Newall (T&N): The World’s Largest Asbestos Company

Turner & Newall: A Global Asbestos Empire Built in Rochdale

Turner & Newall Ltd. (T&N) was, for most of the twentieth century, the dominant force in the global asbestos industry. The company’s roots trace to the merger in 1920 of several British textile and asbestos businesses, most notably Turner Brothers Asbestos Co. (founded in Rochdale, Lancashire, in 1871) and J.W. Roberts Ltd. Together these firms controlled not merely manufacturing but the full supply chain: asbestos mines, raw fiber processing, spinning and weaving mills, insulation manufacturing, and finished product distribution.

At its peak, T&N operated or owned asbestos mines in South Africa (the Transvaal province, where high-grade blue crocidolite and brown amosite were mined), in Canada (Quebec chrysotile mines), and in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). These mining operations fed fiber to manufacturing plants across the United Kingdom and to export customers worldwide. The sheer scale of T&N’s operations meant that its products reached virtually every corner of the global asbestos marketplace—from construction projects in the British Commonwealth to automotive factories in Europe and North America.

In the United Kingdom, T&N was involved in building insulation, pipe lagging, boiler coverings, ceiling tiles, roofing sheets, and countless other construction and industrial applications. The company’s products were specified into thousands of public buildings, hospitals, schools, shipyards, and factories built between the 1920s and the 1970s. Many of these structures still contain T&N asbestos materials—undisturbed and potentially dangerous if renovations or demolitions proceed without proper abatement protocols.

By the 1990s, asbestos litigation had become an existential threat to T&N. The company faced hundreds of thousands of claims in the United Kingdom and a growing wave of American litigation, particularly related to its Ferodo friction products subsidiary. In 1998, T&N was acquired by Federal-Mogul Corporation, a US-based manufacturer of automotive parts, in a transaction that would prove financially catastrophic for the acquirer within just three years.

Turner Brothers Asbestos in Rochdale: A Landmark of Industrial Disease History

The Turner Brothers Asbestos (TBA) factory in Rochdale, Lancashire, is one of the most extensively studied occupational asbestos exposure sites in the history of industrial medicine. The Rochdale works began manufacturing asbestos textiles—yarn, cloth, rope, and other woven products—in the late nineteenth century and continued operations well into the late twentieth century. At its height, the Rochdale plant employed thousands of workers and processed vast quantities of raw asbestos fiber drawn from T&N’s own global mining operations.

The occupational health crisis at Rochdale was recognized by researchers earlier than in most industries. Beginning in the 1930s, British occupational medicine researchers began documenting the extraordinary rates of pulmonary disease—asbestosis, lung cancer, and eventually mesothelioma—among TBA Rochdale workers. These landmark studies, published in peer-reviewed medical journals, provided some of the first systematic scientific evidence linking sustained asbestos fiber inhalation to fatal cancer and fibrotic lung disease.

Despite this early scientific awareness, protective measures at the Rochdale plant remained dangerously inadequate for decades. Workers were not consistently provided with effective respiratory protection; engineering controls to reduce airborne dust were slow to be implemented; and the company did not fully inform workers of the extent of the health risks to which they were being subjected. The institutional knowledge of hazard coexisted with institutional inaction on worker protection for many years.

The Rochdale site is particularly significant from a legal and historical standpoint because the documentary record is unusually detailed. T&N’s own internal correspondence, medical records, and safety committee minutes—produced in discovery during years of litigation—revealed in uncomfortable detail what the company knew, when it knew it, and what actions it chose to defer or avoid. These documents became critical evidence not just in T&N cases but in the broader development of asbestos litigation theory, helping establish the legal standard for what asbestos manufacturers knew and when. The Rochdale documents influenced asbestos liability arguments across multiple jurisdictions worldwide.

Today, former TBA Rochdale workers and their survivors continue to seek compensation. In the UK, claims can be pursued through the government’s Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme or through civil litigation. In the US, claims stemming from Rochdale-connected exposure route through the Federal-Mogul T&N subfund when exposure can be linked to T&N products used in American workplaces.

Ferodo Friction Products: Asbestos Brakes and Clutches Worldwide

Ferodo was, and remains, one of the best-known names in automotive friction materials. The brand originated with Herbert Frood, who in the 1890s developed improved brake lining materials using asbestos fibers woven into a heat-resistant compound. The “Ferodo” name became synonymous with quality brake linings and clutch facings throughout the twentieth century, and the brand was eventually absorbed into the T&N corporate family as part of its global friction materials business.

Ferodo’s product line included brake shoes, brake linings, disc brake pads, clutch facings, and other friction materials used in automobiles, trucks, buses, motorcycles, trains, aircraft, and industrial machinery. The defining characteristic of classic Ferodo friction materials was their asbestos content. Chrysotile and, in some formulations, amosite asbestos fibers were embedded in the friction compound because asbestos was uniquely suited to automotive brake demands: it was heat-resistant, mechanically durable, and capable of maintaining consistent friction coefficients even at extreme temperatures generated during braking emergencies.

The problem with asbestos in brake materials was not its performance but the dust it generated during routine vehicle servicing. When a mechanic serviced a vehicle equipped with Ferodo brake linings—grinding worn linings to fit replacement drums, blowing out brake dust with compressed air, drilling or sanding friction surfaces—they released asbestos fibers into the air of an enclosed automotive workshop. Mechanics who serviced brakes for years or decades, often without respiratory protection and in poorly ventilated spaces, accumulated substantial asbestos fiber burdens in their lungs.

Ferodo products were sold extensively in the United States through automotive distributors and dealerships. Ferodo-branded materials were used in both original equipment manufacturing (OEM) applications and the automotive aftermarket, meaning that American mechanics who worked on European-manufactured vehicles or who purchased Ferodo replacement parts through US distributors had direct exposure to T&N’s asbestos-containing products regardless of never having set foot in the United Kingdom.

Ferodo and other brake manufacturers began transitioning to asbestos-free friction formulations by the late 1980s in response to regulatory pressure and liability concerns. However, the installed base of asbestos-containing brakes in vehicles already on the road meant that mechanics continued to encounter and disturb asbestos brake materials well into the 1990s as those older vehicles required servicing. Any mechanic who regularly serviced older British or European vehicles during the 1970s, 1980s, or early 1990s likely had significant Ferodo exposure.

Federal-Mogul Acquisition, Bankruptcy, and the T&N Subfund

In 1998, Federal-Mogul Corporation—a Detroit-area manufacturer of automotive components including pistons, bearings, seals, and the Champion brand of spark plugs—acquired Turner & Newall in a transaction valued at approximately $2.4 billion. The acquisition was intended to expand Federal-Mogul’s European presence and add T&N’s friction materials business (Ferodo) to its own growing portfolio. What the deal also brought, however, was the enormous and rapidly growing weight of T&N’s unresolved asbestos liabilities—claims that numbered in the hundreds of thousands across the UK and US.

Federal-Mogul had its own pre-existing asbestos exposure through its Fel-Pro and other gasket and seal operations. Combined with the inherited T&N liability, the accumulated asbestos burden proved unmanageable. In October 2001—just three years after the T&N acquisition—Federal-Mogul filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States while its UK subsidiaries simultaneously entered administration under British insolvency law. The dual-jurisdiction filing was one of the largest asbestos-driven corporate bankruptcies in history.

The reorganization required years of complex, multi-jurisdictional negotiations involving US bankruptcy courts, UK administrators, thousands of US claimants, hundreds of thousands of UK claimants, and multiple creditor constituencies. Ultimately, a plan was confirmed that established the Federal-Mogul Asbestos Personal Injury Trust (FMPIIT) under Section 524(g) of the US Bankruptcy Code. The trust includes separate subfunds for different Federal-Mogul business units, including a dedicated T&N subfund for claimants whose disease is attributable to Turner & Newall or its subsidiaries (including Ferodo).

The T&N subfund currently carries a payment percentage of approximately 3.9%. This relatively low percentage reflects the very large total claim population (including hundreds of thousands of UK claimants in addition to US claimants) and the funding constraints established through the bankruptcy plan. Mesothelioma claimants receive payments calculated from the trust’s scheduled value for that disease tier, multiplied by the 3.9% payment factor. While 3.9% may appear low in isolation, T&N trust claims are routinely filed alongside claims against dozens of other asbestos trusts, and the combined recovery from all applicable trusts and any direct litigation can be substantially higher than any single trust payment would suggest.

Turner & Newall Brands, Products, and Operations Summary

Frequently Asked Questions: Turner & Newall & Ferodo Claims