The Chemical Industry
In regional terms, Manchester was not a major centre of the chemical industry compared to the towns of north Cheshire, which were based on local salt deposits. However, in certain specialised areas such as artificial dyestuffs, Manchester developed internationally important industries.
The Dyestuffs Industry
Although natural dyes had been manufactured for centuries and were an important component of the Lancashire textile industry, it was not until the 1850s that scientists managed to create wholly synthetic dyes. In 1856 William Perkin synthesised a purple dye named mauveine, and in effect a new industry was born.
During the 1860s and 1870, there was an international race to create new dye colours. This required exact scientific knowledge rather than craft skills, and professionally trained chemists were much in demand. Manchester, as a centre for the textile industry, and with educational institutions which taught advanced chemistry, was able to profit from this.
Manchester had scientists who made major contributions to the analytical chemistry which underpinned the dyestuffs industry. These included Frederick Crace-Calvert (1819–73), who was an expert on phenol, which was used in making artificial dyes, and Edward Schunck (1820–1903), who analysed the chemistry of indigo and madder dyes.
The dyestuffs industry relied initially on supplies of coal tar, which was an industrial by-product, to produce aniline dyes. The location of the dyestuffs industry was not heavily dependent on localised natural resources, and major industrial centres like Manchester were well suited to hosting dyestuffs plants.
Ivan Levinstein (1845–1916) was Manchester’s first and most successful artificial dyestuffs manufacturer. He came from Berlin, where he had studied chemistry, and moved to Manchester in the 1860s. Levinstein saw the potential of the industry, and set up a small factory at Blackley, north Manchester, an area already associated with natural dyemakers. Levinstein’s firm soon established a local foothold, creating new Manchester brown and Blackley orange dyes.
The firm of Levinsteins eventually merged into the British Dyestuffs Corporation, which itself became part of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in 1926. ICI was the largest and most influential British chemical company of the twentieth century, and it continued to maintain its main dyestuffs research laboratories at Blackley until the 1990s. Several other dyestuffs companies were based in Manchester including British Alizarine Ltd. in Trafford Park, and the Clayton Aniline Co. Ltd. in east Manchester (later owned by the Swiss company CIBA-Geigy).
The domestic dyestuffs industry was soon overtaken by much larger German companies such as Bayer and BASF, which were much more successful in export markets. Levinstein was greatly concerned by this, and he warned against British industrial retardation. He advocated better technical education, and helped fund the dyeing laboratory at Manchester Municipal Technical School. Unusually for a Manchester businessman, he was also an outspoken advocate for protective tariffs, and was a member of Joseph Chamberlain’s Tariff Commission in the Edwardian period.
During the First World War, the dyestuffs industry played a critical role in providing chemical products used in munitions and in poison gases. Levinstein’s warnings about German dominance of the market seemed vindicated and in the post-war period, the government treated dyestuffs as a strategic industry.
This protection allowed ICI to develop a major presence in the dyestuffs industry, so that it was able to compete with the still-dominant German companies. ICI invested heavily in research and development at its Blackley laboratories. By 1945 the ICI Dyestuffs Division, had over 10,000 employees and was selling 6000 different products.
Blackley continued to be an important centre for the company up to the 1990s. There was an increasing shift away from dyestuffs towards other types of fine chemicals, such as food colours and fragrances, in this latter period. The Blackley site eventually closed in the early twenty first century, a few years before the other major dyestuffs producer in the area, Clayton Aniline, which closed in 2003.
Additional Resources
M R Fox, Dye-makers of Great Britain 1856–1976: a history of chemists, companies, products and changes (Imperial Chemical Industries 1987)
Related Blog Posts
ICI Dyestuffs Division Archive 11 November 2016https://rylandscollections.com/2016/11/11/library-acquires-major-ici-dyestuffs-division-archive/
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