Kingsford is a brand that makes charcoal briquettes, along with related products, used for

grilling Grilling is a form of cooking that involves heat applied to the surface of food, commonly from above, below or from the side. Grilling usually involves a significant amount of direct, radiant heat, and tends to be used for cooking meat and v ...

. Established in 1920, the brand is owned by The Clorox Company. Currently, the Kingsford Products Company remains the leading manufacturer of charcoal in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, with 80% market share. More than 1 million tons of wood scraps are converted into charcoal briquettes annually.

History

Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational corporation, multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. T ...

sold more than one million

Ford Model T The Ford Model T is an automobile that was produced by the Ford Motor Company from October 1, 1908, to May 26, 1927. It is generally regarded as the first mass-affordable automobile, which made car travel available to middle-class Americans. Th ...

s in 1919. Each one used 100

board feet The board foot or board-foot is a unit of measurement for the volume of lumber in the United States and Canada. It equals the volume of a board that is in length, one foot in width, and in thickness, or exactly liters. Board foot can be abbrev ...

of wood for parts such as the frame, dashboard, steering wheel, and wheels. Because of the amount of wood needed,

Henry Ford Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American Technological and industrial history of the United States, industrialist and business magnate. As the founder of the Ford Motor Company, he is credited as a pioneer in making automob ...

decided to produce his own supply. He enlisted the help of

Edward G. Kingsford Edward George Kingsford (March 1, 1862 – July 19, 1943) was an American forest inventory, timber cruiser, real estate developer, and automotive executive, who became the authorized representative for the Ford Motor Company and developed t ...

, a real estate agent and timber cruiser from Michigan, to locate a supply of wood. Kingsford’s wife was a cousin of Ford. In the early 1920s, Ford acquired large timberland in

Iron Mountain, Michigan Iron Mountain is a city in and the county seat of Dickinson County, Michigan. The population was 7,518 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, down from 7,624 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census. Located in the state's Upper Penin ...

, and built a

sawmill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logging, logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes ...

and parts plant in a neighboring area which subsequently became

Kingsford, Michigan Kingsford is a city in Dickinson County, Michigan, United States. Its population was 5,139 at the 2020 census, a slight increase from the 5,133 recorded at the 2010 census. It was named for the developer Edward G. Kingsford. Geography Kingsf ...

. The mill and plants produced sufficient parts for the cars, but generated waste such as stumps, branches and sawdust. Ford suggested that all wood scraps be processed into charcoal. A

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a Public university, public research university in Eugene, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1876, the university is organized into nine colleges and schools and offers 420 undergraduate and gra ...

chemist, Orin Stafford, invented a method for making pillow-shaped lumps of fuel from sawdust and mill waste combined with tar and bound together with cornstarch. He called the lumps "charcoal briquettes."

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February11, 1847October18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, ...

designed the briquette factory adjacent to the sawmill and Kingsford ran it. Ford named the new business Ford Charcoal. It was a model of efficiency, producing of briquettes for every ton of scrap wood. In the beginning, Ford's "briquettes" were sold only through Ford dealerships. The charcoal was marketed to meat and fish smokehouses, but demand soon exceeded supply. By the mid-1930s, Ford was marketing "Picnic Kits" containing charcoal and portable grills, capitalizing on the link between motoring and outdoor adventure that his vagabond travels popularized. "Enjoy a modern picnic," the packages read, "Sizzling broiled meats, steaming coffee, toasted sandwiches." But it wasn’t until after World War II that backyard barbecuing took off, thanks to suburban migration, the invention of the Weber grill, and increased marketing efforts. In 1951 an investment group bought Ford Charcoal and took over operations, renaming it Kingsford Charcoal in honor of

and

. The company was later acquired by

Clorox The Clorox Company (formerly Clorox Chemical Company) is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of consumer and professional products. As of 2024, the Oakland, California-based company had approximately 8,000 employees worldwide. N ...

in 1973.

Manufacturing

Kingsford charcoal is made by charring hardwoods such as oak, maple, hickory, walnut, etc., depending on the regional manufacturing plant. That char is then mixed with other ingredients to make a charcoal

briquette A briquette (; also spelled briquet) is a compressed block of coal dust or other combustible biomass material (e.g. charcoal, sawdust, wood chips, peat, or paper) used for fuel and kindling to start a combustion, fire. The term is a diminutive der ...

. As of January 2016, Kingsford Charcoal contains the following ingredients: * Wood char - Fuel for heating * Mineral char - Fuel for heating * Mineral carbon - Fuel for heating *

Limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

- Uniform visual ashing *

Starch Starch or amylum is a polymeric carbohydrate consisting of numerous glucose units joined by glycosidic bonds. This polysaccharide is produced by most green plants for energy storage. Worldwide, it is the most common carbohydrate in human diet ...

- Binding agent *

Borax The BORAX Experiments were a series of safety experiments on boiling water nuclear reactors conducted by Argonne National Laboratory in the 1950s and 1960s at the National Reactor Testing Station in eastern Idaho.

- Release from press molds *

Sawdust Sawdust (or wood dust) is a by-product or waste product of woodworking operations such as sawing, sanding, milling and routing. It is composed of very small chips of wood. These operations can be performed by woodworking machinery, portable p ...

- Accelerate ignition The raw materials, primarily wood scraps from regional sawmills, are delivered to Kingsford factories. The material undergoes magnetic filtration to remove any foreign metal objects. The wood scraps are milled into smaller wood chips. The material then moves into an industrial dryer filled with hot air to remove any moisture. The wood chips are later processed through a large furnace with multiple hearths (called a

retort In a chemistry laboratory, a retort is a device used for distillation or dry distillation of substances. It consists of a sphere, spherical vessel with a long downward-pointing neck. The liquid to be distilled is placed in the vessel and heat ...

) in an oxygen controlled atmosphere that chars the wood without it burning. The wood gets progressively more charred as it drops from one hearth to the next. The charred wood chips are combined with the other dry ingredients and go through a hammermill which breaks everything down into small particles. This moves to a mixer where it is combined with the wet ingredients, starch and borax. This mixture is press formed into pillow-shaped briquettes and move on to be dried before being packaged for sale. Kingsford also retails products that combine their charcoal with other flavors and spices to create flavored smoke.

Plant locations

Charcoal facilities

Belle, Missouri Belle is a city in northeast Maries County and extending north into southeast Osage County in the U.S. state of Missouri. The population was 1,381 at the 2020 census, down from 1,545 in 2010. The Osage County portion of Belle is part of the J ...

Burnside, Kentucky Burnside is a home rule-class city in Pulaski County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 611 at the 2010 census. In 2004, Burnside became the only town in Pulaski County or any adjoining county to allow the sale of alcoholic beverages ...

Parsons, West Virginia Parsons is the largest city in and county seat of Tucker County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 1,322 at the 2020 census. Parsons is located at the confluence of the Shavers Fork and the Black Fork, forming the head of the ...

Springfield, Oregon Springfield is a city in Lane County, Oregon, Lane County, Oregon, United States. Located in the Willamette Valley, Southern Willamette Valley, it is within the Eugene-Springfield, OR MSA, Eugene-Springfield metropolitan statistical area. Separ ...

Retort facilities

Beryl, West Virginia Beryl was an unincorporated community and coal town located in Mineral County, West Virginia, United States. Homes and properties were slowly purchased over the years by Westvaco NewPage was a leading producer of printing and specialty papers ...

* Glen, Mississippi * Summer Shade, Kentucky

References

External links

* {{Clorox Charcoal Clorox brands Products introduced in 1920