Giant won't be toppled easily

Jun 6 2006 By Evening Gazette

In the 1960s chemical giant ICI employed 30,000 workers on Teesside. People back then could probably not imagine Teesside without the chemical giant as a son followed father into its plants at Billingham, Wilton and North Tees.

But how times have changed. Today ICI employs 360 at Uniqema at Wilton, in a business which makes ingredients for products ranging from lipsticks to paints.

This is its largest operation on Teesside and even that is up for sale, although ICI has said it will retain this division if a "satisfactory value" cannot be achieved.

Locally it also has 100 in research and development and 20 at its regional and industrial division.

The three Teesside chemical sites are now home to myriad of companies.

Names which dominate the industrial scene today include Huntsman, Lucite, Johnson Matthey, Advansa, DuPont, Dow, Invista, Sembcorp Utilities UK, Invista, Terra Industries.

Wilton, one of the largest chemical sites in Europe, used to be called ICI Wilton.

But in recent years it has been renamed Wilton International to reflect the fact different companies have made their homes there.

But the change in the area's industrial make-up, although it started more than a decade ago, is taking its time to filter through.

I remember in 1995 when Teesside experienced its biggest fire ever, when a faulty light fitting sparked a huge blaze at a polypropylene warehouse owned by BASF at Wilton.

As the news was breaking, a Gazette reporter came to ask my advice as business editor and my comment was: "It may not be anything to do with ICI - there are other companies based on the site."

When nearby residents were interviewed on the TV and radio they kept referring to "the ICI" as they talked about the incident.

You would have thought that by now the message would have got through that on Teesside ICI, is a shadow of its former self and that most chemical operations are no longer in it its fold.

But when the explosion rocked Billingham and beyond last week, even though it actually happened at the Terra Nitrogen site, when the story was first reported on the national news wires it was tagged "Blast ICI".