Adolph Coors and John Herold Prussian-born Adolph Coors (1847–1929) opened the Colorado Glass Works in 1887 with fellow German immigrant Joachim Binder and James R. Ward to manufacture beer bottles for his brewery, the
Adolph Coors Brewing Company, west of Denver. In 1888, the glass works, incorporated as Coors, Binder & Co., was idled by a strike and never reopened. The remaining building of the Glass Works by 1910, its warehouse, was leased to Austrian-born John J. Herold (1871–1923) and incorporated as the
Herold China and Pottery Company situated upon the site at 600 Ninth Street in Golden. Herold used
clay from nearby mines to make tableware and heat-resistant ovenware under the trademark Herold Fireproof China, with major financial support from Coors. The now-abandoned clay pits form the western boundary of the
Colorado School of Mines (CSM) campus. CSM professor Herman Fleck helped Herold perfect his glazing technique. Adolph Coors became the majority stockholder and was elected to the board of directors of Herold China in 1912. John Herold resigned in 1912 due to
tuberculosis and other health concerns, and Adolph Coors Company acquired Herold China in 1914. Herold returned later in 1914 to manage the plant, but left permanently in 1915 for the Guernsey Earthenware Co. in
Cambridge, Ohio. The Rocky Mountain Bottle Company, maker of Coors beer bottles in nearby
Wheat Ridge and a joint venture with Owens-Brockway Glass Container Inc., came long after Coors, Binder & Co., and has never been affiliated with Coors Porcelain.
Rosebud porcelain and Prohibition after WW1 After World War I, Coors Porcelain made tableware and cookware bearing the trademarks Rosebud, Glencoe Thermo-Porcelain, Coorado, Mello-Tone and others. Chemist Harold W. Ryland (1881–1966) was hired in 1923, and worked his way up to GM and VP of Porcelain and mayor of Golden 1939–45 before his 1957 retirement. Germany became competitive once again in 1926, and put downward pressure on Coors' chemical porcelain business. to develop clays mined by the
Alberhill Coal and Clay Company for use in china that could compete with imports. He started the
H.F. Coors China Company, a manufacturer of dishes for restaurants and institutional use, in
Inglewood, California, in 1925. Grover also had friction with Adolph Jr., left for California in 1924, and eventually became a representative for the brewery there., Standex was preparing to close Coors China and sell its property for redevelopment circa 2003. Mug-maker Catalina China Inc. of
Tucson, Arizona, acquired the assets of Coors China from Standex, and moved the company to Tucson in 2003. The assets included a 200-ft-long gas-fired
tunnel kiln.
Aluminum beer cans In the 1950s, Coors Porcelain's parent company investigated the possibility of replacing steel
beverage cans with aluminum ones, as part of a closed-loop
recycling system. The effort was the brainchild of
W.K. "Bill" Coors (1916–2018), the second son of Adolph II and the vice-president of Porcelain. Coors formed a joint venture with
Beatrice Foods (then parent of Primo Beer in
Hawai'i), named Aluminum International, to develop the seamless aluminum can. Coors built a
pilot plant at the southeast corner of 8th Street and Washington Avenue in 1955 for the aluminum can line. After years of experiments, failures and successes, including the ill-fated late 1954 rollout by Primo of the can which proved not yet ready for market due to flaws, Coors at last unveiled the perfected seamless aluminum can to the world in January 1959. In 1970, Coors resumed their ambitious and aggressive program called "Cash for Cans", which operated throughout Coors' 11-state marketing area offering a
penny a can. Coors success with the aluminum industry was a critical breakthrough in the development of America's recycling market and collection infrastructure. The can operation eventually outgrew the Porcelain building (which was then absorbed into the main porcelain plant as Building 10) and moved into its present location east of the brewery in 1966. The can, end and bottle factories were jointly managed by Joe Coors as Coors Container Company from 1971 to 1981. Coors Ceramics began developing hot-pressed SiC-whisker-reinforced Al2O3 ceramic tooling for beverage can machinery in the 1990s. On January 22, 2009, the original Coors can plant was named an ASM Historical Landmark by the Board of Trustees of
ASM International, for its role in ushering in the age of recyclable aluminum beverage containers. The date marked the 50th anniversary of Coors' first aluminum can. The building, known though later years as Building 10, proved too incapable of adaptive reuse upon the plant's redevelopment commenced in 2024 and it was largely taken down, but its remaining glass block windows were salvaged and a remaining portion of its northeast wall kept standing with the goal of preserving it as part of the project.
Technical ceramics and company growth after WW2 The company gradually diversified its lines of
technical ceramics before and especially after World War II. The factory was enlarged by 40,000 ft2 in 1960. Coors greatly expanded its product lines, reduced scrap and accelerated production with the aid of
cold isostatic pressing in the 1940s;
metallizing,
tape casting and
hot isostatic pressing in the 1950s; and multilayer ceramic
capacitors in the 1960s. A four-story high, 32-ft diameter
spray dryer with 5000 lb/hr capacity was installed in 1962.
Lawrence Radiation Laboratory awarded Coors a 2-year contract in 1963 to produce enriched
urania-
beryllia fuel elements for
Project Pluto's Tory II-C nuclear
ramjet engine, which increased employment by 230 to a then-record 1100 total. High-
alumina (85 to 99.9% Al2O3) ceramics replaced
porcelain (mixed-oxide ceramics, e.g.,
mullite) in many thermomechanical, electrical and chemical applications. Coors engineers invented fully dense, glass-free 99.5+% Al2O3 ceramics in 1964, useful for many applications where porcelain is deficient., Growth in the 1970s enabled Coors to build the 150,000 ft2 electronic ceramics Clear Creek Valley Plant east of Golden in 1970, and its first facility outside of Golden, an electronic substrate plant in
Grand Junction, CO, in 1975. Coors made its first purchase of a competitor when it bought Wilbanks Inc. of
Hillsboro, Oregon, in 1973. Two more competitors, Research Instrument Co. of
Norman, Oklahoma, and Alumina Ceramics Inc. of
Benton, Arkansas, were acquired in 1975 and '76, resp. Coors opened its first foreign factory in
Glenrothes, Scotland, in 1981. Two more foreign subsidiaries were acquired in the early 1980s, an electronic ceramics plant in Singapore and a paper-tooling plant in Brazil.
F 99.8% alumina tray. Scale: the coin between E & F is a U.S.
quarter.
The Joe Coors era Joseph "Joe" Coors Sr. (1917–2003), third son of Adolph II, joined Porcelain in 1940 after graduation from
Cornell University and stints at
DuPont and
National Dairy Products Corp. He was promoted to president in 1946, and became a member of the board of directors and an executive of Adolph Coors Company as well in 1952. Joe was named a Fellow of the
American Ceramic Society (ACerS) in 1967, and an Honorary Member of ACerS in 1985.
Coors Porcelain becomes Coors Ceramics Coors Porcelain was renamed
Coors Ceramics Company in 1986, shortly after
Joseph Coors Jr. (1942–2016),, succeeded R. Derald Whiting (1923–1995) as president. At the time, porcelain was a small part of the 12-plant, 2200-employee company's output. High-alumina ceramics were and remain the company's primary products. Joe Jr., a mathematician and
quality engineer, had been at Wilbanks 1973-84 and was its president 1980–84, and the vice-president for quality at Coors Porcelain 1984-5 prior to his promotion. Joe Jr. promptly reorganized the company into two divisions, Electronic and Structural.
Chaired professor and ceramic research at CSM Janet H. Coors (1912–1994), widow of Herman Coors, endowed the Colorado Center for Advanced Ceramics (CCAC) at the Colorado School of Mines in 1988 with $2 million, and established the H.F. Coors Distinguished Professor of Ceramic Engineering chair. Coors executive David G. Wirth Jr. (1937–2017), was appointed as the first director of CCAC. Dennis W. Readey left the
Ohio State University to become the first Coors Professor and succeeded Wirth as director of CCAC. Readey, a Fellow of ACerS, served as president of ACerS in 1991–2, and was named a Distinguished Life Member of ACerS in 2002. Upon his retirement, Readey was succeeded as Coors Professor by Nigel Sammes, and as director of CCAC by Ivar Reimanis. Reimanis was promoted to the Coors Chair in 2012 upon Sammes' retirement. Geoff Brennecka was awarded the Coors Chair in 2022. John Coors earned his
B.Sc. in
chemical engineering at CSM in 1977, the first of eleven Coors family members to graduate from Mines as of 2014. and has been a research professor in CCAC as well as an employee of CoorsTek. VP Doug Coors holds a B.Sc. in Engineering Physics, Co-CEO Michael Coors holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, and Co-CEO Timothy Coors (son of Jeff) a B.Sc. in Chemical and Petroleum Refining Engineering, from Mines. Michael was appointed to the Mines Board of Trustees by Gov.
Jared Polis in Jan 2024. CoorsTek endowed CSM with $26.9 million, the largest in Mines' history, for the construction of the CoorsTek Center for Applied Science and Engineering, in September 2014. Ground was broken for the new 95,000 sq. ft. (8800 m2) building on 2 May 2016 on the former site of Meyer Hall, the home of the physics department. CoorsTek employed about 50 CSM alumni at the time of the announcement.
The Coors empire separates Adolph Coors Company became a
holding company in 1989, with
Coors Brewing Company as its largest subsidiary. The non-brewing subsidiaries were spun off late in 1992 under a new holding company,
ACX Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: ACX), with Bill Coors as chairman of both holding companies. Most of the ceramics-related GTC projects were folded into Coors Ceramics, while others were sold to investors or shut down with the demise of GTC in the late 1990s. Golden Aluminum was sold to
Alcoa in 1999, and is now an independent remelter and rolling mill in
Fort Lupton, Colorado. Graphic Pkg., previously Coors Packaging Co. 1974–88, merged with Riverwood International Corp. in 2003 and moved its headquarters to suburban
Atlanta, but kept a 250-employee plant in Golden until 2010 that supplied paperboard packaging for Coors beer. ACX and Adolph Coors Co. had many common stockholders including the Coors family, but were otherwise entirely independent of one another. Coors Ceramics Co. was no longer affiliated with the Coors brewery. Coors Ceramics' headquarters moved from Ninth St. in Golden to a new building in the Coors Technology Center in an unincorporated area northeast of Golden.,
Acquisitions and diversification In an effort to broaden its business beyond mostly structural and insulating ceramics, Coors Ceramics made several acquisitions in the late 1990s, especially of suppliers to the semiconductor industry. Coors acquired plastics manufacturer Tetrafluor Inc. of
El Segundo, California, in August 1997 for $15.8 million. Coors bought precision machine shops Edwards Enterprises of
Newark, California, and Precision Technologies of
Livermore, California, in March 1998 for $18 million and $22 million, respectively. Coors acquired ceramic maker Doo Young Semitek Co., Ltd., of Kyungbook, South Korea, for $3.6 million in December 1999. Coors purchased machine shop Liberty Machine Inc. of
Fremont, California, US for $4 million in March 2000. In 1993, Coors sold circuit board manufacturer Microlithics Corp. to VisiCom Laboratories, and its ceramic subsidiaries in
Ocean Springs, Mississippi and
Rio Claro, São Paulo, to undisclosed buyers. In September 2013 CoorsTek purchased Innovative Medical Device Solutions of
Fort Worth, Texas, for an undisclosed amount, merged it with C5 Medical Werks of Colorado, and created a new subsidiary, CoorsTek Medical LLC.
Coors Ceramics becomes CoorsTek In 2000, ACX was dissolved and Coors Ceramics became an independent, publicly traded company under the name
CoorsTek, Inc., Annual revenue was $334M and an operating loss of $32M was reported for 1999. CoorsTek was traded on the
NASDAQ under the symbol CRTK. Joe Jr. retired as chairman of CoorsTek in 2000, and was succeeded by his younger brother John (b. 1956). John had been president since Oct 1998. Revenue jumped to $540M in 2000, with record operating income of $58.0M. Worldwide employment declined in 2001 from 4200 at the beginning of the year to 2400 in mid-2002, due largely to a semiconductor industry slump. Keystone Holdings LLC, a
trust of the Coors family that owned 27% of CoorsTek stock, bought the remaining 73% it did not already own, and took the company private once again in 2003. John Coors had been the president of Golden Genesis Corp. (GGC), a manufacturer of photovoltaic devices for solar power collection in
Scottsdale, Arizona. ACX owned 55% of GGC stock (
Nasdaq: GGGO), which it sold to
Kyocera Solar Inc. in 1999 for $30 miilion
Saint-Gobain acquisition CoorsTek signed an agreement in June 2010 to buy certain assets of the Advanced Ceramics division of the French conglomerate
Saint-Gobain., The Advanced Ceramics division employed 1200 workers worldwide, and 500 at six North American sites, at the time. CoorsTek gained ownership of several longtime competing brands, such as Cerbec Si3N4 bearings, Solcera and Cerastat. The transaction was completed in January 2011, with CoorsTek assuming ownership of six plants in Europe; four in the USA; one each in Canada, Mexico and Brazil; and sales offices in Japan, China, Taiwan and Singapore. The acquisition gave CoorsTek a total of 44 facilities on four continents, and increased capabilities in SiC, Si3N4,
mullite and
steatite. Compagnie de Saint-Gobain retained ownership of its 22 High-Performance Refractories, Lo-Mass, Carborundum Abrasive Products and Hexoloy SiC products business sites.
Covalent Materials Corp. acquisition CoorsTek acquired Covalent Materials Corp., formerly
Toshiba Ceramics Co., and its three factories in Japan in December 2014 for ~$450M, the largest acquisition in CoorsTek's history. The crucibles business was sold to Momentive Technologies in 2022. CoorsTek revenues increased to $1.25 billion since the Coors family-owned Keystone Trust bought all the stock in 2003. CoorsTek claims it has turned a net profit every single quarter since then.
Forbes magazine estimated that CoorsTek's cash flow reached $340 million in 2015. CoorsTek was worth an estimated $2.5 billion in 2015, about $200 million more than the family's 16% stake in the brewery. Production was discontinued at CoorsTek's original site at 600 Ninth St. in Golden in 2021. The company plans to redevelop the property into its world headquarters and other commercial uses. Much of the complex was deconstructed in 2024, with many artifacts from the site saved including those from decades of porcelain plant operation (including the kiln that made
insulators for the
Manhattan Project) and unearthed remains from the 1880s era Colorado Glass Works. The historic and iconic 1916 brick face on Ford Street, along with a portion of the plant's major 1926 addition, its 1940s buildings from the World War II era, combination steel and concrete tower building and a portion of the 1955 aluminum can pilot plant, were preserved, with modern buildout of the new headquarters from these commenced in 2025. == Products and services ==