Intertek

History

The origins of Intertek can be traced back to three businesses: a marine surveying business formed by Caleb Brett in 1885, a testing laboratory formed by Milton Hersey in Montreal in 1888, and a lamp testing centre established by the Association of Edison Illuminating Companies in 1896. These businesses were all acquired by the multidisciplinary services firm Inchcape plc during the 1980s and early 1990s.

During November 1996, Inchcape Testing Services was acquired by the private equity firm Charterhouse Capital Partners in exchange for £380 million; it was promptly renamed Intertek. By this point, the company was heavily involved with numerous governments and other authorities around the world. In America alone, agencies of the US government collectively paid Intertek $35.7 million in exchange for roughly 250,000 tests that were performed between 1994 and 1997. During the late 1990s, Intertek was the only American-based registrar for BS 7750.

In September 2000, Intertek's American subsidiary was reported to have allegedly been involved in the falsification of test data that had impacted multiple US government agencies; the U.S. Department of Justice brought criminal charges against 13 former employees of the firm for their role in the scandal. The news led to a planned floatation of the company being postponed. Richard Nelson, Intertek's chairman and chief executive, announced that the labs that carried out the work had been closed down and that the firm had reprocessed the relevant data. Almost two year later, new plans were announced for the company to be floated on the London Stock Exchange; at the time of the announcement, the company had 10,300 employees and operated in 99 countries through 149.

In June 2004, Intertek's ETL SEMKO division acquired the automotive part tester Entela Inc. On 19 September 2007, the firm announced its acquisition of National Software Testing Laboratories; that same year, it also acquired the analytical R&D lab Quantitative Technologies Inc.

In 2010, Intertek acquired Ciba Expert Services’ Environmental, Safety, & Testing and Regulatory businesses, which included Cantox Health Sciences (Cantox) and Ashuren Health Sciences (Ashuren); separately, it also bought Pacifica Marine. One year later, the firm purchased Labs & Testing S.A. (L&T).