Meeting with George Ewart- ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries)

ICI logo- founded in 1926 as the
product of four companies merged.

Through conversation with one of my mother's work contacts about A levels and future interests, it transpired that her father worked in a company called ICI -Imperial Chemical Industries- a chemical company founded in Britain in 1926 and for much of it's history has been the largest manufacturer in Britain. As I am thinking about the future and what types of things you can go on to do with degrees from university in things like chemistry, biochemistry and biomedicine, this seemed like a great opportunity to question what exactly her father did and his general path through life. She told me that he had studied Chemistry at Glasgow University and after he graduated he had been involved with ICI, at first being employed with a more chemistry-centric role to his work, but later rising through the company until he became the Managing Director of ICI's overseas unit in India.
She also explained that he was extremely enthusiastic about encouraging young people into chemistry and related fields, and would be more than happy to have a meeting with me. Of course, this seemed like an amazing opportunity, and so I jumped at the chance to meet Mr. Ewart and ask him about his career and see if he would answer any questions I had about the career path I might want to choose.
Before I met Mr. Ewart I had done some more reading around about ICI and what it specifically is involved in: the company was the result of a merger between four substituent companies; Brunner Mond, Nobel Explosives, united Alkali Co. and British Dyestuffs Corp. In its early days, it was competing with other large chemical firms such as IG Farben and DuPont and it's original base was in Billingham, Stockton-on-Tees, not far at all from where I live. It has contributed to many industrial processes and been key to developing new chemical products, things like:

Pthalocyanin

  Dulux Paint colour pigments (with DuPont in 1932)

  Pthalocyanin(1929), a blue/green dye used in artist's paint and even    used in a large proportion of CDs

  Perspex (1932) and Polyethylene (1937) of course you've heard of these

Terylene polymer

  Terylene (1941) a polymer used   about 30% for bottles and 60%   for fabrics (also known as PET)

  Crimplene (1950) a fabric   material resistant to creases

it also branched out into more Pharmaceutical products, creating ICI pharmaceuticals in 1957 under which things such as Halothane (1951) was produced, an anaesthetic agent. Inderal (1965) a beta blocker, Tamoxifen (1978) was a drug used to combat breast cancer by being an inhibitor of the processes enabling breast cells to grow, therefore it is especially used for men with breast cancer. Between these years it had also been developing many successful Pesticides, such as primiphos-methyl, primicarb, brodifacoum and lambda-cyhalothrin.

 Various changes in ICI's CEOs skyrocketed it's profits and in 1970-75 it was Britain's largest Exporter, and began to make huge business moves such as Acquiring Atlas Chemical industries in America and BNS (British Nylon Spinners) as well as selling other parts of it's company. ICI was included in the FTSE100 while this buying and selling continued until it found itself in debt of £4 billion, at which point it sold its chemical commodities, £1 bn to ICI Australia, and £3 bn to DuPont in 1997. After this, it was taken over in 2006 by AzkoNobel with an initial bit of £7.2 billion, however this was later increased to £8 billion and accepted by ICI. It still has bases in Stockton-on-Tees, Redcar & Cleveland, Manchester, Slough, Ayrshire and Hertfordshire.

Picture of George Ewart
taken for Indian news.

I also managed to find some news from India about Mr. Ewart's division, specifically that the Indian division of ICI was involved in rubber chemicals and explosives, particularly the formation of Nitroglycerine. It employed around 7,100 people at the time.

George and I had a great couple of hours of conversation, as he took me through his career path from his various experiences of great things and memories from Glasgow university where he studied, to his particular memories of his first roles in ICI, where he travelled to many eastern european countries to be the middle man between the chemical producers back in the UK and the sales teams for the consumers in these countries, therefore his role in these positions was to decide on particular prices, as he had knowledge of the costs, processes and yields of these chemical reactions. This gave him confidence in the business sides of things, and he encouraged me to open my mind to travelling to different countries to build experience in foreign places.
He asked me what A levels I was taking and how I was getting on with them. I Replied that I enjoyed both Biology and Chemistry the most out of my four (Bio, Chem, Physics and Latin) and was wondering where in particular he thought might be a good area to focus for the future sorts of fields within the chemistry/biology world to which he replied that he thought biochemistry and biomedicine were probably the most up and coming sectors, due to the newly available technology we are leaning how to utilise. Of course when he was young, chemistry was all the rage, without biology having caught up for example, Crick and Watson only discovered the specific structure of DNA in 1953, and so much more was need to be discovered before the corporations could successfully build business in fields relating more heavily to biochemistry and biomedicine technologies.
Another interesting point raised during our discussion was the idea of being accepted into a company to work, and them sponsoring me through university in order to take me back and have me working in the company with a degree. I have searched around for this sort of opportunity however most companies do not seem to offer this, at least not openly. It was fantastic to have met and had a long and meaningful conversation George, as I hope he will be a useful contact in the future, and continue to be a source of inspiration to me.