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<a href="https://www.astrazeneca.com/content/dam/az/Investor_Relations/annual-report-2017/AstraZeneca_AR_2017_Additional_Information.pdf">ICI’s 1993 demerger</a> captured the mood. Its pharmaceutical, agrochemical and bioscience businesses became Zeneca, which then merged with Sweden’s Astra in 1999 to form AstraZeneca. A year later, the agribusinesses of AstraZeneca and Swiss pharma giant Novartis were <a href="https://www.syngenta.com/company/our-history">combined to create Syngenta</a>.

Meanwhile a “new” ICI also came out of the demerger that was focused on paints, plastics and bulk chemicals. Four years later, the company borrowed heavily to buy Unilever’s speciality chemicals division. To pay this off, it sold off most of its businesses over the next decade to various buyers. Left mostly with just Dulux paints, the ICI name finally disappeared in 2008 after it was bought for £8 billion by Dutch group AkzoNobel. You can see the whole dismantling of the old conglomerate in the diagram below, along with the status of the different parts of the business today (click to make it bigger).

The break-up of ICI

<figure class="align-center zoomable"> <a aria-label="Zoomable image" href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/762566/original/file-20260928-60-2fjyof.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Chart showing the break-up of ICI" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/762566/original/file-20260928-60-2fjyof.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/762566/original/file-20260928-60-2fjyof.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/762566/original/file-20260928-60-2fjyof.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/762566/original/file-20260928-60-2fjyof.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/762566/original/file-20260928-60-2fjyof.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/762566/original/file-20260928-60-2fjyof.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/762566/original/file-20260928-60-2fjyof.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.1&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a> <figcaption> Pink = UK capability materially reduced/lost; blue = UK operations retained but foreign-owned; green = UK capability retained. Note this is a simplified figure, excluding foreign assets and some smaller disposals, intermediate owners and site transfers due to data limitations. Site closures do not always represent a net loss of capability as operations may have modernised, moved to or been replaced at other UK sites. Continued UK activity does not necessarily mean that intellectual property or the full original production chain remained in the UK. Author provided, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a> </figcaption> </figure>

Hiving off the high-value business was not a foolish strategy. AstraZeneca became one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies. Syngenta became a major crop-science business. Britain was right to back science, innovation and higher-value products.

Yet, Janet saw the downsides from the inside. When she finished her degree in 1995, she returned to Macclesfield near Manchester to work for the newly independent Zeneca Pharmaceuticals. The new company was plainly worried about losing the manufacturing excellence it had inherited from ICI. It worked with Warwick Manufacturing Group, an industrial research unit at the University of Warwick, to capture that knowledge and turn it into a more explicit staff training programme.

Britain’s changing chemical export mix, 1997-2023

What began as manufacturing excellence developed into supply chain excellence and helped shape Janet’s own career. Yet this episode gives an insight into what’s at stake when you break up an ecosystem like ICI.

A business can be separated legally and financially in a matter of months. The capabilities that make it work have usually taken years to build. These include experienced people, trusted relationships and routines that are rarely written down in full. The same goes for all the shared equipment and business interdependencies that were taken apart at the same time.

Chemical exports by category (£bn 2023)

<h2>The chemicals nobody notices until they are gone</h2>

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