science

Horsehead Corporation

Horsehead Corporation is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Horsehead Corporation rather than just read about it. In short: Horsehead Holding Corporation, formerly The New Jersey Zinc Company, was an American producer of zinc and related materials based in Pittsburgh. The operations of the historic company are currently conducted as American Zinc Recycling.

Key takeaways

Horsehead Corporation belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Horsehead Corporation to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Horsehead Corporation from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Horsehead Holding Corporation, formerly The New Jersey Zinc Company, was an American producer of zinc and related materials based in Pittsburgh. The operations of the historic company are currently conducted as American Zinc Recycling. The New Jersey Zinc Company was for many years the largest producer of zinc and zinc products in the United States. The company thrived in the period from 1897 to 1966, at which time it merged with Gulf and Western Industries. It continued to operate as a subsidiary of Gulf+Western until 1981, when a management-led buyout acquired it under the name of Horsehead Industries. The New Jersey Zinc Company remained a subsidiary of Horsehead Industries until 1987, when Horsehead merged it with St. Joe Minerals a Missouri lead and zinc producer to form Zinc Corporation of America. The company suffered from worldwide record low prices for zinc in the early 2000s and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2002. Sun Capital Partners purchased the company's assets in 2003 for $73.6 million and renamed it Horsehead Corporation which currently produces zinc products processed from recycling and steelmaking waste. Horsehead filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Feb 2, 2016.

History

The company had its origins in northwestern New Jersey in 1848 when two companies were created to exploit the iron and zinc deposits at Franklin and Sterling Hill in Sussex County, New Jersey. The Sussex Zinc and Copper Mining and Manufacturing Corporation was incorporated in 1848 for the purpose of mining zinc, and the New Jersey Exploration and Mining Company was incorporated in 1849 for the purpose of mining iron. The founding partners were the same for both companies, and in 1852 the companies merged to form the New Jersey Zinc Corporation. The company adopted the horsehead, one of the state symbols of New Jersey, as its logo. Because of ambiguous deeds, overlapping claims, and misunderstanding over the nature of the ores at Franklin and Sterling Hill, mining companies in the district were in constant litigation. From 1868 to 1880, the New Jersey Zinc Company fought a legal battle with Moses Taylor's Franklin Iron Company, a dispute that was finally resolved in 1880 by merging the two companies into the New Jersey Zinc and Iron Company. In 1897, the remaining Franklin District companies were consolidated under the umbrella of the New Jersey Zinc Company, led by Stephen S. Palmer and August Heckscher as general manager. The Palmer family controlled the company for 46 years until the death of Stephen's son Edgar in 1943, when the estate of Edgar Palmer was forced to sell its controlling interest in order to pay inheritance taxes. In 1966, the company agreed to merge with Gulf and Western Industries and become a subsidiary of that conglomerate. The passage of environmental protection laws in the 1970s turned New Jersey Zinc's legacy of environmental pollution into a liability. In 1981, former officials of Gulf and Western's Natural Resources Division led a buyout of New Jersey Zinc and made it a subsidiary of Horsehead Industries, Inc, a reference to the company's logo adopted in 1852. Saddled with environmental cleanup liabilities, and struggling with cash flow due to record low prices in the early 2000s, Horsehead Industries filed for bankruptcy in 2002. At its peak, the company owned and operated smelters and mines across the United States and Canada. The sites of the smelters at De Pue, Illinois and Palmerton, Pennsylvania, and the Eagle Mine in Eagle County, Colorado are listed as EPA Superfund sites. On July 22, 2010, two Horsehead workers were killed at a plant in Monaca, Pennsylvania. An explosion occurred in a refinery column and the workers suffocated due to smoke inhalation. The 1954 film Salt of the Earth was based on the 1951 strike against New Jersey Zinc Company’s Empire Zinc mine in Bayard, New Mexico. In February 2016, Horsehead Corporation filed for Chapter 11 protection in the U.S. Court of Bankruptcy in Delaware. Subsequent to the bankruptcy filing many shareholders wrote into the court alleging foul play by Greywolf and other members of the ad-hoc group of noteholders. On May 2, in the US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, Judge Sontchi entered an order for the formation of an official committee of equity holders, declaring, "Something Smells fishy to the court". Shareholders in Horsehead included Mohnish Pabrai, Matthew Peterson, Phil Town and Guy Spier Horsehead emerged from bankruptcy in September 2016 as a private company owned by Greywolf Capital Management, and renamed "American Zinc Recycling". As of August 2018, American Zinc Recycling operates six facilities: a state-of-the-art solvent-extraction and electrowinning plant in Mooresboro, NC; a zinc powder facility in Palmerton, Pennsylvania; and four recycling facilities located in Barnwell, South Carolina, Calumet, Illinois, Rockwood, Tennessee, and Palmerton, Pennsylvania. On April 28, 2019, a fire started at the company's zinc production plant in Mooresboro which forced some residents in the area to evacuate. None of the company's employees were injured and all were accounted for.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Horsehead Corporation

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Horsehead Corporation claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Horsehead Corporation before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Horsehead Corporation ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Horsehead Corporation

In research: Horsehead Corporation appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Horsehead Corporation in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Horsehead Corporation is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1848 establishments in New Jersey, 1966 mergers and acquisitions, 1981 mergers and acquisitions, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Horsehead Corporation outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Horsehead Corporation in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Horsehead Corporation means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Horsehead Corporation out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Horsehead Corporation in simple terms?

Why does Horsehead Corporation matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Horsehead Corporation?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Horsehead Corporation.