Imperial Chemical Industries

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Imperial Chemical Industries plc

Type	Public (LSE: ICI), (NYSE: ICI)
Founded	1926
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom
Key people	Peter Ellwood (Chairman) John McAdam (CEO)
Industry	Chemicals
Products	Paints & speciality chemicals
Revenue	£4,845 million GBP (2006)
Operating income	£502 million GBP (2006)
Net income	£295 million GBP (2006)
Employees	31,910 (2005)
Website	www.ici.com

Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) a British chemical group and one of the largest chemical producers in the world. It is based in London. It produces paints and speciality products (including ingredients for foods, specialty polymers, electronic materials, fragrances and flavours). It employs around 32,000 people and had a turnover of just over £5.8 billion in 2005.

[edit] 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 (which was subsequently split up in 1952 into BASF, Agfa, Hoechst AG, Bayer and other companies), the new company produced explosives, fertilisers, insecticides, dyestuffs, industrial chemicals, printing materials, and paints. In its first year turnover was £27m.

Until 1937, the Sunbeam motorcycle business which had come with Nobel Industries was part of ICI.

ICI played a key role in the development of new products, including the dyestuff phthalocyanine (1929), the acrylic plastic Perspex (1932), Dulux paints (1932, co-developed with DuPont), polyethylene (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, Teesside. From 1971 to 1988 ICI operated a small General Atomics TRIGA Mark I nuclear reactor at its Billingham factory.

Always innovative, in 1974 ICI Mond division was responsible for creating the world's first online shared public spreadsheet that successfully monitored the numerous chemical production plants within the scope of the company. It was highly successful and remained operational for 27 years without a change to the underlying software which was intentionally designed to allow the plant operators to make updates and create new applications with no knowledge of computer programming—just as today's spreadsheet users do using products such as Microsoft Excel or equivalent.

In 1988, the company successfully fought off a hostile takeover bid from the Hanson plc conglomerate.

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 speciality 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.

While ICI remains a large and powerful company, it is no longer the industrial powerhouse that it once was, being viewed by some as a cornerstone of Britain's imperial power.