On Friday 20th March an agreement was concluded between Capital Refractories Limited and the administrators of Penn Refractories Limited in which Capital has taken ownership of the physical assets, know-how, formulations, brand names etc. of Penn Refractories.

Penn was founded in 1981 and had built up a £5 million turnover business supplying monolithic and pre-cast refractories to the steel, petrochemical, aluminium and other thermal process industries with a range of well known branded products including Pencrete, Penset, Penvibe, Pencover and Penflow.

Penn’s management called in the administrators about two weeks ago when the company ceased production and trading. Capital’s intention is to move Penn’s production to existing facilities.

Dennis Austin has joined Capital to lead the continuation and further sales development of the Penn range of products. Dennis was previously with Penn for many years, responsible for technical sales and product development. Dennis has many years' experience of refractory sales into the sectors mentioned above and is extremely highly respected in the industry.