Imperial Chemical Industries
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Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) is a British chemical group and one of the largest chemical producers in the world. It is based in London. It produces paints and specialty products (including ingredients for foods, specialty polymers, electronic materials, fragrances and flavours). It employs around 35,000 people and had a turnover of just over £5.6 billion in 2004.
History
ICI was founded in December 1926 from the merger of four companies - Brunner Mond, Nobel Explosives, the United Alkali Company and British Dyestuffs Corporation. Competing with DuPont and IG Farben (later BASF), the new company produced explosives, fertilisers, insecticides, dyestuffs, industrial chemicals, printing materials, and paints. In its first year turnover was £27m.ICI played a key role in the development of new products, including the pigment phthalocyanine (1929), the acrylic plastic Perspex (1932), Dulux paints (1932, co-developed with DuPont), Polythene (1937), sulfamethazine (the first sulfonamide antibiotic), paludrine (1940s, an anti-malarial drug), halothane (1951, an anaesthetic agent), Inderal (1965, a beta-blocker), tamoxifen (1978, a frequently used drug for breast cancer), and PEEK (1979, a high performance thermoplastic) . Because of their success in the pharmaceutical industry, ICI formed ICI Pharmaceuticals in 1957.
One of the main plants was at Billingham, County Durham. From 1971 to 1988 ICI operated a small General Atomics TRIGA Mark I nuclear reactor at its Billingham factory.
In 1993 the company decided to demerge its chemical business from the pharmaceutical bioscience divisions. Pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, specialities, seeds and biological products were placed into a new and independent company called Zeneca Group (which merged with Astra AB in 1999 to form AstraZeneca PLC, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world). The company also moved away from bulk and industrial chemicals towards specialty chemicals during the 1990s in the hope of making its income less dependent on the business cycle, earning higher profit margins, and developing businesses with long term growth potential. However its financial performance so far in the 21st century has been erratic.
ICI sold its Australian subsidiary, ICI Australia, in 1997 and the following year the subsidiary changed its name to Orica.
External links
- [Official site]
- [Dulux]
- [National Starch and Chemical Company] ICI subsidsiary.
- [Yahoo! profile]
- [Orica]
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