Producer
Johns Manville (Berkshire Hathaway)
Major fiberglass mat, insulation, and roofing products manufacturer; owned by Berkshire Hathaway; produces fiberglass scrim mat for asphalt shingles; Denver CO headquarters
2
Inputs supplied
1
Goods downstream
1
Facilities
0
Stories
What they make
2 inputs Johns Manville (Berkshire Hathaway) supplies
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Where it shows up
Goods downstream
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What else they do
Business segments
The company's full revenue map, where this supply-chain role fits within their broader business.
Fiberglass Mat & Scrim
30%Insulation
35%Commercial Roofing
20%Building Products
15%
Intelligence
What's known
Sourced claims about this company's role in supply chains, chokepoints, concentration, incidents, dual-use connections.
Origin2023
Johns Manville was once the largest asbestos company in the United States and bears more responsibility than any other single company for the US asbestos health crisis that killed an estimated 200,000-300,000 Americans. In 1982, facing over 16,500 asbestos personal injury lawsuits, it became the first major industrial company to file bankruptcy specifically to manage mass tort liability. The Manville Trust was created with the company's assets to compensate victims -- a legal structure later copied by other asbestos defendants. The company emerged from bankruptcy, rebranded, and in 2001 was acquired by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway for $1.8 billion. Today it operates under the JM brand making fiberglass and insulation products, and most industry participants are unaware that Berkshire's building materials subsidiary is the direct corporate successor to the firm most responsible for the asbestos epidemic.
Johns Manville ↗Did you know2023
Johns Manville produces fiberglass mat for residential asphalt shingles (35% US market share) AND industrial pipe insulation systems for petrochemical refineries, LNG terminals, and chemical plants from the same core fiberglass manufacturing infrastructure. When a major petrochemical buildout occurs -- as with US LNG export terminal expansion 2018-2023 -- industrial pipe insulation demand competes for fiberglass fiber and manufacturing capacity with residential construction insulation. The same raw glass pulled in JM furnaces gets allocated between homebuilder insulation orders and ExxonMobil refinery pipe insulation contracts. Price spikes in one sector propagate to the other through shared manufacturing and raw material constraints that market participants in each sector rarely recognize.
Johns Manville ↗Concentration2023
Johns Manville, Owens Corning, and CertainTeed collectively supply approximately 90% of US fiberglass scrim mat used as the structural substrate in asphalt shingles. This three-company oligopoly for a critical construction input is entirely opaque to housing market analysts, who typically model shingle supply as a function of asphalt prices and labor -- not fiberglass mat capacity. All three companies also compete in the finished shingle market, creating a structure where the input suppliers and finished-goods competitors are the same three companies, each with incentive to preferentially supply their own downstream operations during supply squeezes.
Johns Manville ↗