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British Titan Products was the manufacturer of Tioxide, a brand of white yet opaque pigment and whitening agent made from titanium dioxide. It was initially organised to replace titanium dioxide supplies that British paint manufacturers imported from Germany. This British industry was established as a joint venture in 1934 by two of the world's major mining and chemical businesses in conjunction with a major industrial consumer and a distribution business.

Tioxide became a wholly owned Imperial Chemical Industries subsidiary in 1992. Within ICI, now renamed after its principal product Tioxide, the business retained a separate identity, which it lost when sold in 1999 to Huntsman Corporation. In 2014 Huntsman companies, including Tioxide, together formed the world's second-largest producer of titanium dioxide, second to DuPont. This business did not manufacture titanium metal.

Lead poisoning

White lead has been used as a pigment since the 4th century BC, even used in cosmetics, providing a pure white pigment with good coverage. The dangers to those who contacted lead were known but not properly understood, and often, but not always, led to lead poisoning.

Shortly before World War I, the US based National Lead Company told its stockholders it now took special care of its workers. Only adult men were employed, laundry services were provided without charge, and respirators were provided. Shower baths were provided, and the workmen were encouraged to wash before eating. It became generally recognised "lead has no business in the human body". Zinc oxides began to be used for white paints. Many countries banned the use of lead paints inside buildings. By the early 1930s lithopone titanium and zinc oxides were being marketed as non-poisonous.

Lead poisoning's great danger to children was not recognised until the 1940s when it was determined that small quantities which might cause chronic lead poisoning in mature adults could kill children.

British Titan Products

Until 1934 titanium oxide was imported to Britain from Germany. Imperial Smelting Corporation, in association with US companies National Lead Company and its associate Titan Company, and Imperial Chemical Industries and Goodlass Wall and Lead Industries Limited together incorporated British Titan Products in 1933, and immediately began erection of a plant for the manufacture of titanium oxide at Billingham.

British Titan Products was incorporated as a private company owned jointly by:

Imperial Smelting took a 17 per cent interest. The plant began operating in July 1934 and further expansion was immediately begun. By the end of 1947 production was eight times the rate achieved in 1934.

By 1948 the ownership was:

White pigments for industry

In 1964 with plants in England, Canada, South Africa and Australia and sales in more than 70 different countries British Titan Products was able to advertise that it was the largest producer of titanium pigments in Europe with plants at Billingham and Grimsby, and research laboratories at Stockton. Tioxide pigments were then used in all kinds of paints (in 14 different grades of Tioxide), industrial finishes, floor coverings, plastics and rubber; in addition in artificial textiles, delicate paper and cosmetics particularly soaps. They were also employed in vitreous enamels on whiteware and baths, printing inks and pale leathers and their polishes.

Tioxide International

Between 1956 and 1966 production capacity was lifted from 100,000 tons a year to 162,000 tons. There was now a British labour force of 2,660 and another 1,300 in its Tioxide International plants in Australia (making Austiox), South Africa, Canada, France (Tioxide SA) and Sierra Leone. The factories took supplies from BTP mines around the world.

Plants were added in Calais and Greatham, County Durham and BTP claimed to be the second largest producer of titanium dioxide in the world.

Tioxide Group

British Titan Pigments became Tioxide Group at the beginning of 1976. when its ownership was:

  • ICI 43.6%
  • Lead Industries later Cookson Group and Vesuvius 43.6%
  • Greeff Chemicals Holdings now Federated Chemical Holdings 12.8% later part of International Nickel Company and now known as Vale Canada

Plants added

Western Mineral Sands

Initially a two-thirds investment with the other third held by Westralian Oil. A miner of the mineral sand deposits which it turns into marketable ilmenite and synthetic rutile. In 1977 a cash issue of shares to Tioxide Australia gave them a 40 per cent shareholding. The remaining Tioxide Group holding of 44.6 per cent was sold by ICI to Australian investors in early 1994 and the business is now run by Iluka Resources.

Greening

Cookson sells to ICI

Lead Industries Group changed its name back to Cookson in 1982 (and in late 2012 would change it again to Vesuvius). Faced by EU higher discharge standards requiring Cookson to stump up with its half share of Tioxide spending £90 million at Grimsby and Calais and also the forthcoming replacement of Tioxide's factories in Canada and Australia each to cost between £50 and £100 million Cookson sold its 50 per cent share of Tioxide to ICI for £160 million. The Grimsby modifications would cut the discharge of sulphuric acid and metal sulphates into the Humber.

On Tees-side ICI planned to spend £63 million on environmental protection for all its local operations. They had already completed seven reed beds where bacteria on the roots of the reeds consumed the liquid effluent from the Billingham plant. Tioxide had already fashioned a wetland area from rough grassland where waders and other wildfowl fed and roosted.

Joint venture with NL-Kronos

Environmental concerns at the Sorel-Tracy plant and at Becancour, Quebec persuaded ICI to join NL-Kronos in a new titanium dioxide plant at Lake Charles, Louisiana.

ICI sale to Texas's Huntsman Corporation

In the mid 1990s ICI began a shedding process to transform itself from a commodity chemicals group to a speciality consumer group. Though they had originally planned to float it as an independent company for a yield about £700 million ICI was persuaded by trade interest to put the business up for sale. In 1999 ICI sold Tioxide to Huntsman Corporation for only £500 million. Sale contracts for £600 million to DuPont (without the purchase the world's largest producer of titanium dioxide) and later to NL Industries were each blocked by the Federal Trade Commission.

Notes

  1. Federated Chemical Holdings Limited a holding company controlling and co-ordinating a group engaged in chemical, pharmaceutical and mineral distribution, trading processing and manufacturing The Times 8 June 1977 page 19

References

  1. BTP The Times 26 February 1962 page ii
  2. ^ Gerald Markowitz, David Rosner. Deceit and Denial, the deadly politics of industrial pollution. University of California Press, New York 2003v ISBN 0520240634
  3. Imperial Chemical Industries The Times 20 April 1934 page 22
  4. Imperial Smelting Corporation The Times 6 November 1933 page 22
  5. Imperial Smelting Corporation The Times 13 November 1934 page 21
  6. Capital for Paint Expansion The Times 31 March 1948 page 8
  7. BTP The Times 16 November 1964 page ix
  8. A decade of growth by BTP The Times 1 August 1966 page 16
  9. Tioxide International The Times 11 October 1971 page IV
  10. British Titan Limited The Times 23 September 1975 page 21
  11. Summers, Merv. "Tioxide". The Companion to Tasmanian History. University of Tasmania. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
  12. Titanium faces slower growth The Times 8 April 1968 page 24
  13. The Times 2 December 1977 page 28
  14. Tioxide sells The Times 23 February 1994 page 26
  15. ^ Green bill may cost ICI firm £290m The Times 16 May 1991 page 26
  16. Cookson seeks £83m in cash call The Times 22 March 1991 page 25
  17. How green grows industry The Times 10 March 1992 page 29
  18. ICI's Tioxide agrees $200m Kronos deal The Times 2 February 1993 page 23
  19. ICI planning sell-offs to fund £5bn Unilever deal The Times 8 May 1997 page 25
  20. ICI makes disposals of £1.7bn to Huntsman The Times 16 April 1999 page 27
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