| Imperial Chemical Industries |
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| companies established in 1926 | |
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| astrazeneca | |
Imperial Chemical Industries ('''ICI''') is a British Chemical company, based in London . It produces paints and specialty products (including ingredients for Food s, specialty Polymer s, electronic materials, fragrances and flavours). It employs around 35,000 people and had a turnover of just over £ 5.6 billion in 2004 . For much of the 20th Century ICI was generally regarded as the leading company in the United Kingdom. The phrase "the chairman of ICI" became a colloquialism for the top person in British business. However ICI's status has fallen steadily in recent decades, and its unique prestige is now dissipated. Today ICI is simply a medium sized player in the global chemical industry, which is an unfashionable industry with low margins and weak growth prospects. It is now one of the smaller constituents of the FTSE 100 Index , much smaller than its own offspring AstraZeneca . 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 Explosive s, Fertiliser s, Insecticide s, Dye stuffs, 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- Malaria l 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 it changed its name to Orica . EXTERNAL LINKS
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