Chemical industry in the United Kingdom

History

Alexander Parkes in 1855 develops the first plastic, in Birmingham, a form of celluloid. Daniel Spill, his assistant, develops it further, as xylonite. The American John Wesley Hyatt later tries to claim the patent, after developing another process for celluloid, with camphor, in 1869. The subsequent British Xylonite Company, formed in 1877, later becomes BX Plastics. A division, Cascelloid, formed in Leicestershire in 1919, becomes Palitoy. Another division, Halex, made sports products.

Sir William Henry Perkin FRS discovered the first synthetic dye mauveine in 1856, produced from aniline, having tried to synthesise quinine at his home on Cable Street in east London. Perkin's work, alone, led the way to the British chemical industry.

Before World War I, the country was largely dependent on Germany for fine chemicals.

Sir Harry Melville (chemist) at the University of Birmingham, conducted much important polymer research, with Birmingham becoming a world leader in polymer research.

21% of the UK's chemical industry is in North West England, notably around Runcorn and Widnes. The chemical industry is 6.8% of UK manufacturing; around 85% of the UK chemical industry is in England.

It employs 500,000, including 350,000 indirectly.

It accounts for around 20% of the UK's research and development.

Timeline

• 1905 Courtaulds is formed
• 1906 British Oxygen Company was formed, it was later a world leader in industrial gases
• 1907 Royal Dutch Shell is formed, from two companies; the British part was founded in 1897 by Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearsted, which sold paraffin oil in the Far East; in order to counter competition from Esso, a joint company had been formed in 1903 with Henri Deterding of the Netherlands
• 1918 Nobel Industries was formed, containing all the explosives industry in the UK, by Sir Harry McGowan, the head of British Nobel
• 1926 ICI was formed from four large companies on 7 December, with a capital value of £65m; it was formed in response to competition from DuPont and Allied Chemical and Dye, which was formed in 1920, in the US; the chairman of Midland Bank, Reginald McKenna, in early 1926 had approached Sir Harry McGowan, from Glasgow, to take over British Dyestuffs
• 1929 Sir D'Arcy Cooper and Antonius Johannes Jurgens formed Unilever; these two companies had previously been staunch competitors across the world
• 1932 The Import Duties Act 1932 limited imports by tariffs. In the 1930s the chemical industry had many trade protections, limiting outside competition
• 1936 ICI formed a Medicinal Chemicals Division, as part of the Dyestuffs research division; this is now AstraZeneca
• 1939 ICI started its first polyethylene unit at Wallerscote in Cheshire. Fisons was also formed
• 1941 Tube Alloys began under Sir Wallace Akers of ICI
• 1947 British Hydrocarbon Chemicals was formed by Distillers (DCL) and BP at Grangemouth; it would have the feedstock from petroleum, not fermentation. In 1949 6% of British organic chemicals originated from petroleum; by 1965 it was 70%
• 1948 Laporte Chemicals, a leader in peroxide chemicals, was formed; it made hydrogen peroxide at Luton
• 1958 Synthetic rubber production in the UK is first started; International Synthetic Rubber at Grangemouth, which made styrene-butadiene elastomer, and DuPont made its neoprene synthetic rubber in Northern Ireland, at the same time
• 1963 Esso introduced butyl rubber (synthetic) at Fawley in 1963
• 1967 BP Chemicals is formed, when BP bought the Distillers share; it became the second-largest UK chemicals company after ICI
• 1986 ICI became the world's leading paint producer, making 750m litres, after it bought Valentine of France and Glidden from SCM of the US; Courtaulds had International Paints, mostly for ships
• 2001 Laporte was bought by Degussa-Huls of Germany for £1.36bn

Discoveries

• 1844 John Mercer (scientist) discovered the mercerisation process for textiles
• 1874 Otto Witt, a Swiss chemist in Brentford, made the first commercial azo dye, which he called Chrysoidine. Sir James Morton (chemist), in Carlisle, in the late 1890s developed some of the first dyes that were resistant to sunlight.
• 1891 Cordite was invented by Frederick Abel and James Dewar
• 1891 Charles Frederick Cross, Edward John Bevan and Clayton Beadle developed Viscose, the first manufacture of a synthetic fiber. Beadle's son, Sir Gerald Beadle (1899-1976), helped set up BBC Television in 1936, being the first Director of Television
• 1916 The important Acetone–butanol–ethanol fermentation process was developed to make cordite in World War I, from the fermentation of starch
• 1923 The first disperse dyes, an azo dye, was developed at the British Dyestuffs Corporation in north Manchester, and anthraquinone dyes. Arthur George Green FRS was an important colour chemist.
• 1928, iron phthalocyanine was discovered by Scottish Dyes at Grangemouth, when investigating phthalimide. Its chemical structure was found in 1934 by Sir Patrick Linstead. These are important dyes. It was the first new chromophore for 25 years. It led to copper phthalocyanine, known as British Rail Blue
• 1931 Perspex is discovered by ICI Dyestuffs division
• 1932 chemist John William Croom Crawford (1891-1987) at Ardeer, North Ayrshire, of ICI, developed a process to make methyl methacrylate, known as Perspex

• 1933 Polythene is discovered at the Winnington Laboratory
• 1935 although Polythene was first discovered in 1933, only by 1935 did Michael Perrin of ICI discover that the oxygen percentage was an important catalyst. ICI scientist B Hapgood discovered that it was an excellent insulator, so was produced for undersea cables from 1939. In 1937 a group of German chemists visited ICI at Winnington, and wanted to licence the polythene chemical process, but no agreement was made. Du Pont, of the US, licensed the ICI process, and made it in bulk from 1941. ICI first made polythene in 1939 at Wallerscote
• 1940 John Rex Whinfield and James Tennant Dickson discover polyethylene terephthalate (known as PET) at the Calico Printers' Association on Poland Street in Manchester
• 1940 Hungarian Nicholas Kurti, and Germans Francis Simon and Heinrich Gerhard Kuhn developed the gaseous diffusion diffusion method of separating uranium hexafluoride for producing enriched uranium, as part of the Tube Alloys project, in association with ICI. This initial work was transferred to the K-25 plant at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee
• 1940s Alcian blue is discovered by ICI Dyestuffs
• 1950 Sorex of Halebank develop the production of the warfarin rodenticide, similar to dicoumarol. Karl Paul Link, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, had identified the substance in the 1930s; it is one of a set of 4-Hydroxycoumarins, that operate as a Vitamin K antagonist that inhibit Vitamin K epoxide reductase; the trade name originates from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF)
• 1951 Halothane is discovered at the Widnes Laboratory
• 1954, Chlorhexidine, a bis-diguanide substance that was discovered at ICI Blackley at Hexagon House, part of ICI Dyestuffs, in north Manchester, when researching biguanides, the compound Hibitane with a bisbiguanide functional group was found by Frank Rose (chemist) FRS. ICI Blackley had also had Alfred Spinks FRS from 1940; it is an important disinfectant, commonly found in Corsodyl mouthwash
• 1954 Ian Durham Rattee (1926-2015) and William Elliot Stephen discover dichlorotriazine at ICI Blackley, sold as the reactive dyes Procion M (dichlorotriazine) from March 1956, and Procion H (monochlorotriazine) from 1957
• 1961 Biaxially Oriented Polypropylene discovered by ICI
• 1977, Sorex, of Halebank in Cheshire, discovers brodifacoum, to overcome warfarin resistance in rodents, it received a Queen's Award for Technology in 1977, it later manufactured difenacoum as 'Neosorexa'

Second World War

The Castner-Kellner works at Runcorn, of the United Alkali Company (formed in 1890) had made chlorine gas for the First World War trenches. Subsequently ICI's Special Products Department was at Weston Point in Runcorn, under Holbrook Gaskell, who had managed this production of chlorine gas.

The Sutton Oak Chemical Defence Research Establishment in Merseyside was established in 1915, on the former Magnum Steelworks, where Foster Neville Woodward was head of research from 1937. Research was conducted on nerve agents, such as DFP. Poison gas production was at Rhydymwyn in Flintshire in north Wales. Porton Down has researched toxins since 1916. The Germans had researched nerve agents at Dyhernfurth, under Gerhard Schrader and Austrian Richard Kuhn. The Americans conducted experiments at Edgewood Arsenal, and the Canadians at Suffield Experimental Station. The V-series of nerve agents, such as VE, VG and VX, were discovered by Ranajit Ghosh (1909 - February 1992) and James Frederick Newman (1915 - 30 June 2004) at ICI in 1952. VG was discovered first, also known as Tetram. Swedish Lars-Erik Tammelin was also conducting work into this.

The Aberporth Rocket Projectile Establishment began in 1941; this is now ParcAberporth, the only site in the UK licensed to fly UAVs, run by Qinetiq.

Output

In 2015, the UK chemical industry exported £50bn of products.

Below the UK chemical industry, the UK automotive industry exports £35bn, and the UK aerospace industry exports £32bn.

Research

The industry employs about 30,000 in research and development. The industry invests £5bn in research. The UK automotive industry invests £2.7bn and the UK aerospace industry invests £2.1bn.

Centres of research include the National Formulation Centre at Sedgefield, the Advanced Propulsion Centre in Coventry, with the nearby UK Battery Industrialisation Centre, and the Centre for Process Innovation in the north east. Unilever Research & Development Port Sunlight Laboratory is in the north west. BP has the Sunbury Research Centre in south-west London.