Know Your Enemy: Kingspan

Irish insulation and flooring manufacturer Kingspan has a massive workforce of 25,000 workers working in over 210 manufacturing facilities in more than 80 countries across the world. Kingspan was founded in 1965 by Eugene Murtagh as an engineering workshop operating out of a yard behind his pub in Kingscourt, Cavan.

The company was initially called Kilgoban Ltd and manufactured steel agricultural trailers and precast concrete septic tanks for farmers. In the early 1970s, the company rebranded as Kingscourt Construction Group and then in 1972, the company combined its geographic home (Kingscourt) with its growing focus on making structural building sections (Panels) to create their new corporate identity: Kingspan.

Eugene Murtagh stepped down as Chief Executive Officer after 40 years. He was succeeded by his son, Gene Murtagh, who became the youngest CEO operating on the Irish Stock Exchange at the time. The father is worth €2.7 billion while his son has over €110 million. Eugene’s Murtagh’s shares in Kingspan net him €14 million a year.

Most of its research and development and corporate workforce operates out of Ireland, they’ve offices in Dublin and Cavan, but it has production operations across Britain, the Americas, Europe, and increasingly in Southeast Asia.

The Kingspan Phu My Factory in Vietnam employs around 100 workers who produce massive envelope panels to insulate buildings. Operating through its joint venture Kingspan Isoeste, the company has scaled up to five manufacturing plants across Brazil (including sites in Santa Catarina, Cambuí, and Anápolis), alongside its Bromyros plant in Uruguay and sites in Paraguay.

Workers in the South American plants report working consecutive backbreaking 10 to 12 hour shifts. Overtime is mandatory. In Brazil Kingspan has been named in over 600 submissions by workers to the labour courts.

Kingspan has been locked into a battle with the SMART Union (International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers) in the United States. Workers organizing at Kingspan plants (such as the one in Modesto, California) reported that management use anti-union captive audience meetings and intimidation of workers.

One worker, Celina Arellano, was given the sack just days after presenting a safety complaint to plant managers. Later, Juan Chavez, a 22-year forklift operator and a key union organizer, was sacked for what the company called “disrespectful behavior”. These terminations were illegal retaliation to decapitate the workers’ movement.

Workers filed complaints with California regulatory bodies for suffering from exposure to hazardous chemicals, lack of proper personal protective equipment, and working in severe unsanitary conditions including an indoor infestation of pigeons leaving droppings over the workspaces.

SMART filed Unfair Labour Practice charges against Kingspan, accusing them of threatening factory shutdowns if “outside organizations” gained a foothold. Kingspan launched a defensive campaign to counter the workers.

In March 2023, at the Kingspan Water & Energy plant in Portadown, County Armagh, was hit by an all-out strike. Shop floor workers represented by Unite returned a massive 99% vote in favour of the strike. The workers were furious that Kingspan management had excluded them from a £1,000 cost-of-living bonus given to other company sectors.

The workers noticed that management was attempting to move scab delivery trucks in and out of the yard under the cover of darkness. The workers escalated the action into a 24 hours a day picket line to block the factory gates day and night. The company flew in scabs from Britain and Poland to try to break the strike. SIPTU workers have also voted to stage strikes at the Cavan facilities over sweeping “survival plans” and aggressive cost-cutting measures.

All this exploitation of an international workforce pays off: Kingspan reported an all-time high trading profit of €955.1 million for 2025. This money comes from exploiting workers in Ireland and all around the globe. Kingspan generates roughly €350,000 per year for every single worker it employs globally.

According to general industrial data from BBC News, the average manufacturing worker in Vietnam earns about $300 to $400 a month. For a standard 8-hour shift, this equates to a wage of roughly $12 to $15 per day.

The Kinspan Phu My factory produces premium architectural QuadCore insulated panels. These panels sell globally for substantial commercial real estate premiums. A team of 100 workers operating a highly automated, continuous chemical-injection lamination line can generate tens of thousands of dollars worth of building material in a single day.

A Vietnamese operator likely covers the value of their $15 daily wage within the first 15 to 30 minutes of starting up the multi-million-dollar automated machinery in the plant. The remaining 7.5 hours of their shift represents pure surplus labour pocketed by the corporation. This is repeated day in, day out in plants from Ireland to Brazil.

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s final Phase 2 report, published by Sir Martin Moore-Bick, explicitly concluded that Kingspan “knowingly created a false market in insulation for use on buildings over 18 metres in height”. The inquiry exposed the “systematic dishonesty” and “complete disregard for fire safety” across Kingspan’s UK insulation division in the years leading up to the 2017 fire that saw 72 working class lives lost.

Shortly after a 2005 test, Kingspan changed the chemical formulation of their K15 insulation boards, making the version sold to the public more flammable than the one tested. When Kingspan tested the new commercial version of K15 in 2007, the test failed catastrophically. Internal documents revealed the trial turned into a “raging inferno,” with the foam insulation burning heavily under its own steam.

The Irish state is a tool of the Irish rich. These rich Irish parasites make sure they keep politicians in their pockets, not just by appointing Fianna Fáil TDs to the board but also through huge donations. During the era when Fianna Fáil was led by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, Kingspan routinely paid for tables at corporate political fundraising dinners and made massive donations.

The Irish state helped a local businessman grow his business into a globe spanning Empire that sucks profit out of workers here and abroad. The idea that the Irish rich are a mere “comprador” class sucking profits out of Irish workers for foreign capital is a joke.

They are part of the multinational corporate class. They suck profits out of workers everywhere. The Irish rich want us to drop neutrality because they want the US and EU armies to defend their parasitic profiteering across the globe when the Irish state machine doesn’t have to reach to do so.

Our contribution to the international working class movement is to overthrow the Irish state and put workers in the driving seat of a planned economy where the wealth we produce is used to satisfy workers’ needs, not fill the pockets of the Murtaghs.