Company type | Public limited company |
---|---|
LSE: CRDA FTSE 100 Component | |
Industry | Chemicals |
Founded | 1925 |
Headquarters | Snaith, England, UK |
Key people | Anita Frew (Chair) [1] Steve Foots (CEO) [1] |
Products | Speciality Chemicals for: Personal Care Health Care Crop Care Lubricant Additives Coatings and Polymers Geo Technologies Polymer Additives Home Care Industrial Chemicals |
Revenue | £1,694.5 million (2023) [2] |
£320.0 million (2023) [2] | |
£172.1 million (2023) [2] | |
Number of employees | 6,100 (2024) [3] |
Website | www |
Croda International plc is a British speciality chemicals company based at Snaith, England. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange.
The company was founded by George William Crowe and Henry James Dawe in 1925. [4] Crowe bought an abandoned waterworks facility at Rawcliffe Bridge for £7, which would later be used to manufacture the company's first barrels of lanolin, a natural protective fat present in sheep's wool. The company was named Croda (a combination of the first few letters of his surname with that of his partner, Dawe). [4]
Crowe and Dawe began working on a process to extract lanolin from sheep’s wool for various industries, including uses in cosmetics, as a waterproofing agent, and as a dressing for leather. At the time, the UK imported lanolin, having no domestic lanolin production at all. [5]
Dawe's extraction process failed initially and Dawe left the company. Philip Wood, Crowe's nephew, was appointed manager of the site in 1925, and Wood worked closely with a Belgian chemist to develop a new extraction process. By the end of the year Croda had successfully produced its first batch of lanolin. [5]
The company struggled to remain profitable to the end of the decade until a report from the National Physical Laboratory was published describing the rust prevention properties of lanolin, creating new business opportunities for the company. The lanolin market was still in its infancy as the World Depression began to take hold in Britain, but Croda was able to expand their domestic market and exports through the 1930s as Wood refined Dawe's production process and gradually developed a wider range of product applications for lanolin. [5]
To aid in military production during World War II, Croda began producing camouflage paints, gun lubrication and cleaning oils, insect repellents, and other resources the British Empire required. [5]
When Wood died in 1949, aged 46, the board decided to run the business by committee, with Wood's son Frederick Wood appointed sales director. In 1950 Fred relocated to New York to set up the company's U.S. subsidiary, Croda Inc. [5] In 1953 Fred returned to the UK and was appointed Croda's managing director, aged just 27. [6]
Under Fred Wood's management Croda experienced a sustained period of rapid growth. Leading cosmetics companies started using its products in the 1950s and at that time it also began to expand internationally: it moved to its present location in 1956. [5]
In 1957, Croda Inc. acquired Hummel Chemical Company and began manufacturing in a new Newark, NJ plant. [5]
It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1964. [5] It expanded rapidly in the 1960s acquiring United Premier Oil in 1967 and British Glues & Chemicals in 1968. [5]
In 1970, Croda acquired L&H Holdings and A B Fleming for ink and synthetic resin production and acquired Midland-Yorkshire Tar Distillers in 1975. [7]
In 1990 it developed Lorenzo's oil, a product famously used to treat adrenoleukodystrophy. [8] In 1998 it bought Westbrook Lanolin. [5]
More recently it has concentrated on speciality chemicals and in 2006 it announced that it had reached a deal with ICI to acquire ICI's Uniqema for a total consideration of £410 million. [9] It announced an offer to acquire Plant Impact, an agricultural bioscience business, for £10 million in February 2018. [10]
In November 2020, it was announced that Croda will be purchasing Spanish home-products company Iberchem for €820 million. The planned purchase was intended to increase the company's sales of fragrance formulations in various markets including China and the Middle East. [11] [12]
The company's products include: [13]
These products are sold to other manufacturing companies. Croda has factories in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, the United States, Brazil, Singapore, India, Indonesia, Korea, and Japan.
Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was a British chemical company. It was, for much of its history, the largest manufacturer in Britain. Its headquarters were at Millbank in London. ICI was a constituent of the FT 30 and later the FTSE 100 indices.
Waxes are a diverse class of organic compounds that are lipophilic, malleable solids near ambient temperatures. They include higher alkanes and lipids, typically with melting points above about 40 °C (104 °F), melting to give low viscosity liquids. Waxes are insoluble in water but soluble in nonpolar organic solvents such as hexane, benzene and chloroform. Natural waxes of different types are produced by plants and animals and occur in petroleum.
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Lanolin, also called wool fat, wool yolk, wool wax, sheep grease, sheep yolk, or wool grease, is a wax secreted by the sebaceous glands of wool-bearing animals. Lanolin used by humans comes from domestic sheep breeds that are raised specifically for their wool. Historically, many pharmacopoeias have referred to lanolin as wool fat ; however, as lanolin lacks glycerides, it is not a true fat. Lanolin primarily consists of sterol esters instead. Lanolin's waterproofing property aids sheep in shedding water from their coats. Certain breeds of sheep produce large amounts of lanolin.
Vegetable oils, or vegetable fats, are oils extracted from seeds or from other parts of edible plants. Like animal fats, vegetable fats are mixtures of triglycerides. Soybean oil, grape seed oil, and cocoa butter are examples of seed oils, or fats from seeds. Olive oil, palm oil, and rice bran oil are examples of fats from other parts of plants. In common usage, vegetable oil may refer exclusively to vegetable fats which are liquid at room temperature. Vegetable oils are usually edible.
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Helene Curtis Industries, Inc. was an American cosmetics and beauty parlor products firm based in Chicago. The company acquired a hair-coloring line through the acquisition of a competitor business. Later the retailer diversified into the field of personal care products, manufacturing Degree, among other items.
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Specialty chemicals are particular chemical products which provide a wide variety of effects on which many other industry sectors rely. Some of the categories of speciality chemicals are adhesives, agrichemicals, cleaning materials, colors, cosmetic additives, construction chemicals, elastomers, flavors, food additives, fragrances, industrial gases, lubricants, paints, polymers, surfactants, and textile auxiliaries. Other industrial sectors such as automotive, aerospace, food, cosmetics, agriculture, manufacturing, and textiles are highly dependent on such products.
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Sir Frederick ("Fred") Ambrose Stuart Wood was a prominent businessman and industrialist most renowned for overseeing the rapid growth of Croda International.
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Scouring is a preparatory treatment of certain textile materials. Scouring removes soluble and insoluble impurities found in textiles as natural, added and adventitious impurities: for example, oils, waxes, fats, vegetable matter, as well as dirt. Removing these contaminants through scouring prepares the textiles for subsequent processes such as bleaching and dyeing. Though a general term, "scouring" is most often used for wool. In cotton, it is synonymously called "boiling out", and in silk, and "boiling off.