Thermax is a multi-national vapour absorption machine company based in India; and in Britain: a historic brand name of boilers, and the name of a former toughened-glass company.
From the 1940s, the Thermax brand of horizontal shell boilers was owned by Ruston and Hornsby of Lincoln. The first of that type was installed at Samuel Smith & Sons by R & H at Colne, Lancashire. In 1966 the parent company was bought by English Electric. The types of boiler were oil-fired and coal-fired.
In October 1968 the brand was sold to Cochrane Co of Annan, Dumfries and Galloway for £1.75m, being known as Cochran Thermax and based in Lincoln. Cochrane Company (Annan) Ltd was bought on 13 March 1969 by John Thompson of Wolverhampton, becoming its Cochran Thompson Division. In 1970 it was bought by Clarke Chapman of Newcastle upon Tyne, later to be part of Northern Engineering Industries (NEI) in 1977, which was bought by Rolls Royce plc in 1989.
The Thermax company based in India, which has also made boilers, has four manufacturing centres, and operates in seventy five countries. It became known as Thermax Ltd in 1980. It derived from the Indian operation of the Wanson company of Belgium, now known as Babcock Wanson since 1990 and based in the Chevilly-Larue district of southern Paris which is owned by Constructions industrielles de la Méditerranée (CNIM). In 1987 it started making vapour absorption machines, in collaboration with Sanyo of Japan. It formed a joint venture in 1988 with North Carolina-based Babcock and Wilcox, who make boilers, to make steam generation units for heat recovery steam generators (HRSGs). In 1992 it formed its Combined Heat and Power Group.
It has four divisions -
- Thermax (Europe) Ltd is based in Fenny Stratford, Milton Keynes in England (not far from IKEA).
- Thermax Inc - based in Northville, Michigan, USA
- Thermax do Brasil Energia e Equipamentos Ltda - Brazil
- Thermax (Zhejiang) Cooling & Heating Engineering Co - China
The main company makes absorption chillers used for large air conditioning systems.
