Coming of a Coppersmith

The history of the Company known today as cemcorp LTD. goes back to 1853, when an Englishman Henry Gough Booth, a brazier and coppersmith, opened Booth & Sons, at 278 Yonge St., Toronto, Canada . He had learned his trade in Cranbrook, England and was an experienced craftsman by the time he emigrated. His second son George Booth who was apprenticed as a coppersmith to his father, took over the business in 1870. The first link with the present company was forged when William Coulter Sr. started his apprenticeship with the Booths in the same year.

The Business Grows

The Booths business steadily expanded in every conceivable article of brass and copper work that could be manufactured including copper utensils, brewery kettles, stills, confectioners' pans, kettles, water systems, wash boilers, and food service equipment for hotels.  William Coulter Sr. soon became a master. With his practical knowledge and ability to supervise others, it seemed natural that he would start in business for himself  which he did in 1886 with a fellow coppersmith to found the Coulter & Campbell Co. The Booth & Coulter companies merged in 1907 with George Booth as President and William Coulter Sr. as Vice President of the new firm. By this time William Coulter Sr.'s 2 sons, William C. Coulter and Albert E. Coulter were fully involved in the family business. The merger rounded out the new firm's field of operations by providing a brass foundry, tinsmithing, machine shop and stamping press operations. With the outbreak of World War 1, the Booth Coulter company set up a munitions department and Canada's first Electroplating plant. In 1923, the Coulter family bought out the Booth family. George Booth moved to Michigan to expand the Cranbrook Institute of Fine Arts that he had founded in 1907 and which is highly distinguished still today. The company became known as Coulter Copper & Brass Co. Ltd.

Coulters in Command
 

Following World War 1, the company converted the munitions department into the rapidly growing area of automotive parts manufacturing. The science of metallurgy was also advancing in great strides and the company moved into manufacturing many products with these new alloys, such as monel, stainless steel, inconel. The initial business started by Henry Gough Booth of Coppersmithing had evolved into twenty businesses of metalsmithing all rolled into one. And so with other developments - branches, like the branches of a banyan tree, had grown into independent trunks.

In 1931 William C. Coulter took over as President, joined by his 2 sons, Howard and Warren R. Coulter. The company was divided between the 2 brothers as Albert left to start his own automotive parts manufacturing business in competition to Coulter Copper & Brass. In 1956 Warren R. Coulter took over as President and later was joined by his 2 sons, Terry and Michael A. Coulter. In 1976 Michael A. Coulter took over as President and the company was again divided as Terry Coulter left to carry on the Swimming Pool and Accessories (pumps, filters) business that the company had started in 1959.
 
 

Throughout all this time, the brewery, distillery, food processing and chemical processing manufacturing business remained the core of the business The company could now design, manufacture, install, commission, and startup whole plants with modern technology in these industries, producing brewhouses, fermenters, distillation towers and heat exchangers, evaporators, industrial mixing kettles, reactors and a wide range of custom fabrications, boilers, pressure vessels to International Codes and Standards.

cemcorp LTD

The Coulter Copper & Brass company continued until 1981 when it merged with another fabricator who was later acquired by a large American multinational company. In 1984, Michael A. Coulter decided to shed all manufacturing capabilities to focus solely on the engineering and project management aspects of the business and formed cemcorp LTD. CONSULTING ENGINEERS. This realignment, together with the retaining and acquiring of a select core of international experts, and the building of strategic alliances with fabricators and contractors, has given cemcorp a flexibility unequaled anywhere in the industry. Today, cemcorp provides a unique Project Management Consulting Engineering service to the Industrial Process industries.