Imperial Chemical Industries
Parent AkzoNobel | ![]() |
Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was a British chemical company. It was, for much of its history, the largest manufacturer in Britain.[1] Its headquarters were at Millbank in London. ICI was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FT 30 and later the FTSE 100 indices.
ICI was formed in 1926 as a result of the
During 1960, ICI's first outsider to serve as chairman,
Considerable changes at ICI came about during the 1990s, particularly in the aftermath of an unsuccessful acquisition attempt in 1991 by Hanson of the firm in what would have been the biggest takeover in British history. That same year, ICI sold its agricultural and merchandising operations of BritAg and Scottish Agricultural Industries to Norsk Hydro; it sold its nylon business to DuPont one year later. In 1993, the firm also de-merged its pharmaceutical bio-science businesses as Zeneca. During 1997, ICI's Australian subsidiary, ICI Australia, was sold in exchange for £1 billion. During 2008, ICI was acquired by AkzoNobel for £8 billion;[3] shortly thereafter, portions of ICI were sold off to Henkel while its remaining operations were integrated within AkzoNobel's existing organisation.[4]
History
Development of the business (1926–1944)

The company was founded in December 1926 from the merger of four companies:
During the 1920s and 1930s, the company played a key role in the development of new chemical products, including the dyestuff
ICI also owned the Sunbeam motorcycle business, which had come with Nobel Industries, and continued to build motorcycles until 1937.[8]
During the
Postwar innovation (1945–1990)

In the 1940s and 1950s, the company established its
During the 1950s, ICI developed a material as Crimplene, a thick polyester yarn that was used to make a fabric of the same name.[15] The resulting cloth is heavy and wrinkle-resistant, and retains its shape well. The California-based fashion designer Edith Flagg was the first to import this fabric from Britain to the United States.[16]
During 1960, Paul Chambers became the first chairman appointed from outside the company.[17] Chambers employed the consultancy firm McKinsey to help with reorganising the company.[17] Export sales doubled during his eight-year tenure export, however, Chambers' reputation was severely damaged by a failed takeover bid for Courtaulds in 1961–1962.[17][18]
On 1 August 1962, ICI's operations in
In 1964, ICI acquired British Nylon Spinners (BNS), the company it had jointly set up in 1940 with Courtaulds. ICI surrendered its 37.5 per cent holding in Courtaulds and paid Courtaulds £2 million a year for five years, "to take account of the future development expenditure of Courtaulds in the nylon field." In return, Courtaulds transferred to ICI their 50 per cent holding in BNS.[20]
Early pesticide development under ICI Plant Protection Division, with its plant at
Peter Allen was appointed chairman between 1968 and 1971.

Between 1971 and 1975, Jack Callard held the position of chairman at the firm.
Between 1982 and 1987, the company was headed by the charismatic John Harvey-Jones.[28] In 1985, ICI acquired the Beatrice Chemical Division; during the following year, it also bought Glidden Coatings & Resins, a leading paints business.[29][30]
Reorganisation of the business (1991–2007)
By the early 1990s, plans were carried out to demerge the company, as a result of increasing competition and internal complexity that caused heavy retrenchment and slowing innovation.
During mid 1991, ICI was subject to an attempted acquisition
In 1992, the company sold its nylon business to
In 1994, Charles Miller Smith was appointed CEO of ICI, one of the few times that an external figure had been appointed to lead the firm, Miller-Smith having previously been a director at Unilever. Shortly afterwards, the company acquired a number of former Unilever businesses in an attempt to move away from its historical reliance on commodity chemicals. During 1995, ICI acquired the American paint companies Devoe Paints,[41] Fuller-O'Brien Paints[42] and Grow Group.[43] In 1997, ICI acquired National Starch & Chemical, Quest International, Unichema, and Crosfield, the speciality chemicals businesses of Unilever in exchange for $8 billion.[44][45] This step was part of a strategy to move away from cyclical bulk chemicals and to progress up the value chain to become a higher growth, higher margin business.[5] Later that same year, it went on to buy Rutz & Huber, a Swiss paints business.[46]
Having taken on some £4 billion of debt to finance these acquisitions, the company was soon compelled to sell off its commodity chemicals businesses:
- Disposals of bulk chemicals businesses at that time included the sale of its Australian subsidiary, ICI Australia, for £1 billion in 1997,[47] and of its polyester chemicals business to DuPont for $3 billion also in 1997.[48][49]
- In 1998, it bought Acheson Industries Inc., an electronic chemicals business.[50][51]
- In 2000, ICI sold its diisocyanate, advanced materials, and speciality chemicals businesses on Teesside and worldwide (including plants at Rozenburg in the Netherlands, and South Africa, Malaysia and Taiwan), and Tioxide, its titanium dioxide subsidiary, to Huntsman Corporation for £1.7 billion.[52][53] It also sold the last of its industrial chemicals businesses to Ineos for £325 million.[54]
- In 2002, the ICI wholly transferred ownership of Boulby Mine to Israel Chemicals Ltd.[55]
- In 2006, the Company sold Quest International, its flavours and fragrances business, to Givaudan, for £1.2 billion[56] and Uniqema, its oleochemical business, to Croda International, for £410 million.[57]
Having sold much of its historically profitable commodities businesses, and many of the new speciality businesses which it had failed to integrate, the company consisted mainly of the Dulux paints business, which found itself the subject of a takeover by AkzoNobel in 2007.[58]
Takeover by AkzoNobel

In June 2007, the Dutch firm AkzoNobel (owner of Crown Berger paints) bid £7.2 billion (€10.66 billion or $14.5 billion) for ICI. An area of concern about a potential deal was ICI's British pension fund, which had a deficit of almost £700 million and future liabilities of more than £9 billion at the time.[59] Regulatory issues in the UK and other markets where Dulux and Crown Paints brands each have significant market share were also a cause for concern for the boards of ICI and AkzoNobel. In the UK, any combined operation without divestments would have seen AkzoNobel have a 54 per cent market share in the paint market.[60] The initial bid was rejected by the ICI board and the majority of shareholders.[61] However, a subsequent bid for £8 billion (€11.82 billion) was accepted by ICI in August 2007, pending approval by regulators.[62]
On 2 January 2008, completion of the takeover of ICI plc by AkzoNobel was announced.
Operations
ICI operated a number of chemical sites around the world. In the UK, the main plants were as follows:
- Synthonia, a synthetic ammonia for explosives.[66] The Wilton R&D site was built to support the plastics division with R&D and chemical engineering facilities. The ICI Billingham Division was split into the ICI Heavy Organic Chemicals Division and ICI Agricultural Division in the 1960s. From 1971 to 1988 ICI Physics and Radioisotopes Section (later known as Tracerco) operated a small General Atomics TRIGA Mark I nuclear reactor at its Billingham factory for the production of radioisotopes used in the manufacture of flow and level instruments, among other products.[67] The Agricultural Division was noted for the development of the world's largest bioreactor at the time – the 1.5 million litre Pruteen Reactor, used for the cultivation of animal feed. Engineering models of components and the builder's model of the complete plant are now in the collection of the Science Museum London Archived 19 November 2021 at the Wayback Machine. Pruteen had limited economic success but was followed by the much more successful development of Quorn.
- dyestuffs. The dye business, known as the ICI Dyestuffs Division in the 1960s, went through several reorganisations. Huddersfield was tied in with Wilton with the production of nitrobenzene and nitrotoluene. Huddersfield also produced insecticides. (Syngenta still manufacture insecticides at Huddersfield). Proxel Biocide was made at Huddersfield from the 80s onwards. Additives also made at Huddersield. Huddersfield became Zeneca then AstraZeneca, in 2004 Huddersfield was Syngenta, Avecia, Arch and Lubrizol running what were all ICI plants at one time. Through the years it was combined with other speciality chemicals businesses and became Organics Division. Then became ICI Colours and Fine Chemicals and then ICI Specialties.[68]
- Tunstead in 1929 and it became the largest limestone quarry in the UK. In 1992 ICI sold its Lime Division to Anglo American as part of its UK Tarmac operation.[69][70]
- Runcorn (in Cheshire): ICI operated a number of separate sites within the Runcorn area, including the Castner-Kellner site, where ICI manufactured chlorine and sodium hydroxide (caustic soda).[71] Adjacent to the Castner-Kellner site was Rocksavage works, where a variety of chemicals based on chlorine products were manufactured, including Chloromethanes, Arklone dry cleaning fluid, Trichloethylene degreasing fluid and the Arcton range of CFCs. Also on that site were PVC manufacture and HF (Hydrogen fluoride) manufacture. At Runcorn Heath Research Laboratories, technical support, research and development for Mond Division products was carried out, and the support sections included chemical plan design and engineering sections. Just to the north of Runcorn, on an island between the Manchester Ship Canal and the River Mersey could be found the Wigg Works, which had been erected originally for producing poison gas in wartime. In Widnes could also be found several factories producing weedkillers and other products. For many years it was known as ICI Mond Division but later became part of the ICI Chemicals and Polymers Division. The Runcorn site was also responsible for the development of the HiGEE and Spinning Disc Reactor concepts. These were originated by Professor Colin Ramshaw and led to the concept of Process Intensification; research into these novel technologies is now being pursued by the Process Intensification Group at Newcastle University.[72]
- Winnington and Wallerscote (in Brunner Mond, during 1991. It was again sold in 2006, to Tata (an Indian-based company) and in 2011 was rebranded as Tata Chemicals Europe. The Winnington plant closed in February 2014, with the last shift on 2 February bringing to a close 140 years of soda ash production in this Northwich site.[citation needed]
- Ardeer (in Stevenston, Ayrshire): ICI Nobel used the site to manufacture dynamite and other explosives and nitrocellulose-based products. For a time, the site also produced nylon and nitric acid. Nobel Enterprises was sold in 2002 to Inabata.[75]
- Penrhyndeudraeth (Gwynedd, North Wales): Cooke's Works, part of ICI's Nobel's Explosives Company division produced nitroglycerine-based explosives up until the site's closure in 1995.
- Slough (in Berkshire): Headquarters of ICI Paints Division.[76]
- Stowmarket : Plant Manufacturing White, and off white Paints
- Prudhoe - Plant Manufacturing Hammerite Paints
- Birmingham: Plant Manufacturing Packaging Coatings for food and beverage cans
- Welwyn Garden City (in Hertfordshire): Headquarters of ICI Plastics Division until the early 1990s.[77]
Argentina
An ICI subsidiary called Duperial operated in Argentine from 1928 to 1995, when it was renamed ICI.
Established in the city of San Lorenzo, Santa Fe, it operates an integrated production site with commercial offices in
It also had an operation at
Australia
The subsidiary ICI Australia Ltd established the
An ICI plant was built at Botany Bay in New South Wales in the 1940s and was part of the Orica demerger in 1997.[80] This plant once manufactured paints, plastics and industrial chemicals such as solvents. It had been detirmined to be the source of the Botany Bay Groundwater Plume contamination of a local aquifer.[80][81]
Bangladesh
In 1968 a subsidiary of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was established in then-East Pakistan. After Bangladesh gained independence in 1971, the company was incorporated on 24 January 1973[82] as ICI Bangladesh Manufacturers Limited and also as Public Limited Company. The company divested its investment in Bangladesh and was renamed as Advanced Chemical Industries Limited (ACI Limited) on 5 May 1992. The company sold its insect control, air care and toilet care brands to SC Johnson & Son in 2015.[83] Currently Advanced Chemical Industries (ACI) Limited is one of the largest conglomerates in Bangladesh with a multinational heritage operating across the country.[84] The company operates through three reporting divisions: Pharmaceuticals, Consumer Brands and Agribusiness.[85]
Sri Lanka
ICI maintained offices in Colombo importing and supplying chemicals for manufacturers in Ceylon. In 1964, following import restrictions that allowed only locally owned subsidiaries of multinational companies to gain import licenses, Chemical Industries (Colombo) Limited was formed as an ICI subsidiary with 49% ICI ownership and remaining held public.[86]
New Zealand
The subsidiary ICI New Zealand provided substantial quantities of chemical products – including swimming pool chemicals, commercial healthcare products, herbicides and pesticides for use within
A fire at the ICI New Zealand store in Mount Wellington, Auckland, on 21 December 1984, killed an ICI employee and caused major health concerns. Over 200 firefighters were exposed to toxic smoke and effluents during the firefighting efforts. Six firefighters retired for medical reasons as a result of the fire. This incident was a major event in the history of the New Zealand Fire Service and subject to a formal investigation, led by future Chief Justice Sian Elias. The fire was a trigger for major reforms of the service; direct consequences included improved protective clothing for firefighters, a standard safety protocol for major incidents, the introduction of dedicated fireground safety officers, and changes to occupational health regulations.[87][88]
See also
- Imperial Chemical House
- IMI plc (formerly Imperial Metal Industries)
- Pharmaceutical industry in the United Kingdom
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{{cite book}}
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- Sneader, Walter (2005). Drug discovery: a history. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-89979-8.
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Further reading
- Reader, W. J. (1970). Imperial Chemical Industries: A History, vol. I: The Forerunners, 1870–1926. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192159373.
- Reader, W. J. (1975). Imperial Chemical Industries: A History, vol. 2: The First Quarter-Century, 1926-1952. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192159441.
- Leslie, Esther (2023). The Rise and Fall of Imperial Chemical Industries: Synthetics, Sensism and the Environment. London, UK: Palgrave. ISBN 978-3031374319.