ICI Exhibition Booklet - Flipbook - Page 8
The New Company: registered 7 December 1926
‘We are on trial before the eyes of the entire world’
– Sir Alfred Mond
First chairman of ICI, 1926-30
Imperial Chemical House on Millbank, facing the Thames, was built to house ICI’s London
headquarters. It was a monument of art deco, the first building in the world to be lit by ‘artificial
daylight’, and had its own artesian wells that supplied water until the 1950s.
Business began on 1 January 1927 with 33,000 employees and five main industrial areas:
Explosives
Headquarters: Ardeer, Ayrshire.
The original site of Nobel’s British Dynamite Co –
inherited links with DuPont from Nobel Industries Ltd.
Dyestuffs
Headquarters: Blackley, Manchester.
Later to be the birthplace of ICI pharmaceuticals.
Alkali Products
Headquarters: Winnington Hall, Cheshire.
The original Brunner, Mond headquarters – inherited links
with US Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation.
General Chemicals – including chlorine, acids &
synthetic ammonia
Headquarters: Runcorn, Cheshire.
Fertiliser Manufacture: Billingham, Stockton on Tees –
inherited from Brunner, Mond.
At Billingham, the Haber-Bosch process for
synthesising ammonia was in place (acquired
from a BASF plant in post-war Germany) and
according to W J Reader, this was Brunner,
Mond’s most important technological
contribution to ICI.
The success of ICI was predicted to lie with the
nitrogen plant at Billingham - supplying the demand
for fertilisers throughout the Empire.
SCI has both international and UK regional groups.
SCI Americas is one of the oldest groups, established in 1894. Other international groups include SCI
Australia and SCI Canada. SCI also has a Chinese UK Group supporting the Chinese STEM community
studying and working in the UK.
The UK regional groups were established in the 1920s, based around UK industry centres:
Bristol and the South West
Cambridge and Great Eastern
East Midlands
All Ireland
Liverpool and North West
London
Scotland
Thames and Kennet
Yorkshire and the Humber