British Insulated Callender's Cables was a 20th-century British cable manufacturer and construction company, now renamed after its former subsidiary Balfour Beatty. It was formed from the merger of two long established cable firms, Callender's Cable & Construction Company and British Insulated Cables.
History
Callender's Cable & Construction Company
Callender's Cable & Construction Company was founded by William Ormiston Callender in 1870. It was originally an importer and refiner of bitumen for road construction but began manufacturing insulated cables at their Erith site on the Thames in the 1880s. It played a significant role in construction of the British National Grid in the 1930s building the 132 kV crossing of the Thames at Dagenham with overhead cables spanning 3060 feet between two 487 ft towers, and allowing 250 ft clearance for shipping. Callender's research and engineering laboratories were based at a former power station site in White City, London, close to Ormiston House, where the company's founder had lived.
Callender's Cable & Construction Company and British Insulated Cables merged to form British Insulated Callender's Cables in 1945. The company was renamed BICC in 1975. BICC had a world presence which was initially in the Commonwealth but in the 1980s and 1990s extended into mainland Europe and beyond. Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese companies gave entry in turn to South America and other parts of Africa. Disastrous investments in former East Germany and Russia helped bring the business to its knees at the same time as margins in every other part of the cable-making businesses came under attack. In the 1970s the firm had UK works at Erith, Prescot, Kirkby, Leyton, Helsby, Leigh, Melling, Wrexham, Blackley, Belfast and Huyton making electric power cables, telecommunications cables and metals. BICC's research and engineering laboratories at a former power station site in White City, London was close to Ormiston House, William Ormiston Callender's house of the 1870s. In 1988 the research and engineering facilities moved to new premises at the company's Wrexham and Helsby sites. In January 1991 British Copper Refiners, a subsidiary of BICC, announced the closure of the Prescot plant with the loss of 230 jobs. In 1999 the ailing BICC sold its optical cables business to Corning and power cables businesses to General Cable. BICC also owned construction company Balfour Beatty and, following sale of its cable operations, BICC renamed itself Balfour Beatty in 2000. In 2002, Pirelli, who acquired the Erith plant from General Cable announced the closure of part of the site and the transfer of the production of oil-filled cable to their Eastleigh works in Hampshire. In 2020 the BICC Cables name continued in use at the former BICC Egypt power cable plant in Giza.
Callender's Cableworks Band
This was an amateur brass band, active between 1898 and 1961, of which all members were employees of Callender's at Erith. They rehearsed and performed in their leisure time, while the company in its role of patron lent its name and supplied uniforms and instruments. The band broadcast prolifically on BBC Radio in the 1920s and 1930s.
