Chemical industry in the United Kingdom

The chemical industry in the United Kingdom is one of the UK's main manufacturing industries. At one time, the UK's chemical industry was a world leader. The industry has also been environmentally damaging, and includes radioactive nuclear industries.

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.

Otto Witt, a Swiss chemist in Brentford, made the first commercial azo dye in 1875, 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.

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.

• 1905 Courtaulds is formed
• 1906 British Oxygen Company is 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 is formed, containing all the explosives industry in the UK, by Sir Harry McGowan, the head of British Nobel
• 1926 ICI is 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
• 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

• 1844 John Mercer (scientist) discovered the mercerisation process for textiles
• 1891 Cordite was invented by Frederick Abel and James Dewar
• around 1892 Charles Frederick Cross and Edward John Bevan discovered a method to make Viscose
• 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^[1]
• 1931 Perspex is discovered by ICI Dyestuffs division
• 1933 Polythene is discovered at the Winnington Laboratory
• 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
• 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;^[2] it is an important disinfectant, commonly found in Corsodyl mouthwash
• 1954 Ian Durham Rattee (1926-2015) and William Elliot Stephen^[3] discover dichlorotriazine at ICI Blackley, sold as the reactive dyes Procion M (dichlorotriazine) from March 1956, and Procion H (monochlorotriazine) from 1957^[4][5]
• 1961 Biaxially Oriented Polypropylene discovered by ICI

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.

In 2015, the UK chemical industry exported £50bn of products.^[6]

Below the UK chemical industry, the UK automotive industry exports £35bn, and the UK aerospace industry exports £32bn. ^[7]

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.

Regulation of the UK chemical industry is largely under the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) and the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals legislation (REACH).

Teesside and Cheshire are areas with an established chemical industry. Significant chemical plants in the UK include:

• Battery Works at Stallingborough in North East Lincolnshire, built by Taylor Woodrow Construction in 1950 for Laporte Industries
• Billingham Manufacturing Plant, former ICI plant that makes nitrate fertiliser^[8]
• Huddersfield Manufacturing Centre, former ICI plant from 1916, became Zeneca in 1993, then Syngenta, makes herbicides
• Ineos Grangemouth chemicals plant, the propylene plant began in 1949, being opened at Grangemouth, Stirlingshire in May 1951^[9] for British Petroleum Chemicals, which had been formed jointly between The Distillers Company and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (known as BP from 1954) in 1948. It would later have a crude oil feed from the Forties Oil Field
• International Paint in Heworth, near Gateshead, east of Felling, make paint for corrosive environments
• P&G London Plant, at West Thurrock; it makes Ariel, Bold, Fairy and Daz
• Seal Sands, run by Lennig Chemicals, the site was built in 1972, later owned by Rohm & Haas, for making acrylate monomer
• Stallingborough Plant, owned by Tronox (Millennium Chemicals until 2007, then Cristal Pigment until 2019); it has been running since 1953 when owned by Laporte
• William Blythe in Church, Lancashire near Accrington
• Wilton International, built by ICI; it is 4000 acres and an olefine site
• Winnington Works, owned by Tata Chemicals Europe previously ICI, at Anderton with Marbury in Cheshire on the River Weaver; it was built in 1874, sold by ICI in 1991; it makes sodium bicarbonate

• Baglan Bay Works, built similar to the Grangemouth plant for British Hydrocarbon Chemicals (from 1956) by George Wimpey,^[10] from 1961 between Port Talbot and Neath in south Wales, it had a light distillate feed from the nearby Llandarcy Oil Refinery, with a steam cracker.^[11] British Hydrocarbon Chemicals became BP Chemicals in 1967. It was demolished in 2003.
• INEOS Nitriles (former BASF before 2008) at Seal Sands was formerly Europe's largest producer of acetonitrile; it was built by Monsanto in the early 1970s
• Coalite Works at Shuttlewood in north Derbyshire, was placed on the proposed route of HS2, closed in 2004
• Elementis chromium plant at Urlay Nook, near Eaglescliffe; it closed in June 2009
• Four Ashes Chemical Plant, Schenectady Europe (SI Group, former Laporte before 1999) off the A449 in Four Ashes, Staffordshire; it was demolished in 2007
• Grimsby Works, built for Courtaulds
• North Tees Works, former ICI near Seal Sands, east of Billingham in Stockton. Announced in June 1964, to make cyclohexane and aromatics. Made 400,000 tonnes a year, to be the biggest aromatics plant in Europe, opened 1966, built by Procon^[12] By 1970, would be the biggest aromatics plant in the world, when expanded south of the Tees, with a pipeline connecting the two sites. ICI jointly operated two neighbouring oil refineries. Shell had a refinery at Teesport
• Hauxton chemical works, 84 acres, in Cambridgeshire, owned by Fisons then Bayer Crop Sciences, closed 2004
• Hickson & Welch in Castleford; it suffered an explosion in 1992
• Rio Tinto Zinc smelter at Avonmouth, the National Smelting Company, where the Imperial Smelting Process was developed in the 1950s, in the 1960s it was the largest zinc blast furnace in the world
• Lennig Chemicals opened its Tyneside Works at Jarrow in 1960, which was bought by Rohm and Haas in the 1970s, and bought by Dow Chemicals in 2009, and closed in 2015
• Unilever Warrington made Persil and Surf; it closed on Thursday 15 October 2020, near Warrington Bank Quay railway station
• William Blythe chemical Works at Hapton, Lancashire, next to the M65, in the Borough of Burnley

Significant chemical companies in the UK have been:

• Fisons, a significant East of England fertiliser company, bought in 1995
• Ineos, it took over many production sites of ICI
• Unilever, with a main detergent site in Warrington and home care manufacture and research on the Wirral

Relevant organisations related to the UK chemical industry are the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE), the Chemical Industries Association, and the Society of Chemical Industry. The chemical industry in Europe is represented by the European Chemical Industry Council or CEFIC.

• Energy in the United Kingdom
• List of largest chemical producers
• Pharmaceutical industry in the United Kingdom

• Chemical Industries Association (CIA)
• Chemistry Council