From Cyanide to 'Beetle'
John Hayes, Plastics Journalist

Early in the 1890s, what was called the McArthur-Forrest process was widely used in South Africa to extract gold from low-grade ore by using cyanide. This demand for
cyanide caused neighbouring firms at Oldbury, Staffs (as it was then) to start experimenting with ways of producing it economically. The two, Albright & Wilson Ltd and Chance & Hunt Ltd, decided to pool their efforts and in 1894 formed a joint subsidiary, the British Cyanides Company,under the chairmanship of Alexander Chance, Chance & Hunt's chairman. Plant was erected on a strip of land in Tat Bank Road, adjacent to the founders' sites.

Production started making sulphocyanide by combining carbon bisulphide and ammonia. This could easily be converted to sodium or potassium sulphoeyanide but making cyanide of potash directly from the latter proved more difficult than anticipated and indeed the problem was never resolved commercially.

Politics ended it, however. The Boer war broke out in 1900 and cut off the largest market for cyanide. The plant was modified to convert sulphoeyanide into fer-rocyanide (yellow prussiate) instead, but the market price of this promptly fell below production cost, so the factory was forced to close until hostilities in South Africa ended in 1902.

Kenneth Malcomb Chance, who had been elected to the board in 1901, noted on his appointment that "the staff consisted of E Rossiter, chemist for the company" and that liquid assets comprised "an overdraft from the Bankers and a stock of some 200 tons of prussiate of soda".

When the war ended a sharp price rise enabled the stock to be sold, the overdraft redeemed and the firm to be reconstructed as a public company in 1904. It had by then discovered that sulphocyanide could be produced more cheaply by using a by-product from local gas works.

When coal was heated the gas contained tar, ammonia, sulphur compounds and small quantities of cyanogen. The latter could be extracted in a scrubber containing sulphur and it was the ammonium sulphocyaijide liquor which gas works delivered to theTat Bank factory, either in railway tank wagons or canal barges. This liquor was pumped into -,team heated stills and agitated with slaked lime to drive off the ammonia which was condensed and blown by air pressure across the canal to Chance & Hunt. The liquor residue was then agitated with 'salt cake' (sodium sulphate) purchased from Chance & Hunt ... a neat piece of reciprocal trading.

The next stage was to concentrate the sodium sulphocyanide liquor by boiling it in large coal fired pots, thus precipitating out sulphates, carbonates and any other insoluble salts. Further heating in smaller agitated pots followed to drive out water and form powdered sulphocyanide. Carbon dioxide gas was bubbled in to check frothing, and as the powdered material finally fused, red hot iron swarf was shovelled into the pots. Tallow candles were also thrown in to reduce bubbling and spluttering.

The scene in the Pot Shed, as described by Cyril Dingley who joined the company as works chemist in 1906, must have resembled Hades. "The contents of pots often boiled over and molten sulphocyanide ran over the furnace beds and down amongst the slack and ashes. And the stink .... was awful! Fumes from the molten mass, mingled with those of sizzling tallow, clung to one's hair and clothes".

Despite this, he records that there was never any fatality due to poisoning during the years that cyanide was produced at many tons per week. Later production stages were not much less hazardous. Pots of fused material were scaled to prevent oxidation and allowed to cool for several days after which the solid contents were hacked out bv brute force. The broken balls of material were placed in iron cages fixed in vats of steam heated water until the material disintegrated. The filtered liquid, a solution of sodium ferrocyanide known as 'black mud', was dropped from the filter press and in a keen wind particles of the ferrous sulphide could ignite spontaneously despite being liberally sprayed with water. The process also gave off acrid sulphur dioxide fumes. Fortunately for the company there was no possibility of a visit from H&SW inspector in those days!

After crystallisation and further treatment, clear molten sodium cyanide was cast into regular blocks, put into metal lined wooden cases and shipped to South African and other gold fields. With outbreak of the 1914-18 war demand for British Cyanides main product leapt because Germany had been a main supplier of cyanide for gold extraction. The company responded by installing more fusion pots and, after a boat carrying -50 tons of Oldbury cyanide was sunk in the Mediterranean, by a superhuman effort in which six men baled 16 tons of molten cyanide from pot to mould during one magnificent 30 hour shift.

Kenneth Chance, who had become the managing director in 1906, was always searching for cheaper feedstocks and new products the company could make. Some initiatives were less than successful. Experiments had proved that atmospheric nitrogen could be fixed as barium cyanide and having designed a furnace able to withstand the high temperature, the company prepared to use the cyanogen it produced to start manufacturing sodium cyanide. However, the project ended abruptly in 1914 when the new furnace overheated and cracked durin. its first
night's operation and shattered hopes based on two years' development. The following afternoon three British cruisers were sunk in the North Sea by German submarines.

Developments for the Ministry of Munitions were more productive and the company rapidly developed processes to make large quantities of sodium manganate for use in gas masks and high purity potassium permanganate for the sugar substitute, saccharin. Red prussiate of potash to be used with ferric ammonium in coating paper for engineering dye line prints was another war effort.

All these materials required potash, the main sources for which were mines in Alsace controlled by Germany. Following a lead that blast furnace dust might be a source of cyanide, British Cyanides analysed dust samples from the North Lincolnshire Iron Co at Scunthorpe and found little cyanide but significant amounts of
potash. With co operation from the Ministry of Munitions it then tested gas and furnace slag from practically every blast furnace in the UK and eventually proved that potassium chloride content of gas dust could be greatly increased by adding salt to a furnace charge. Three blast furnaces adopted the salt process and provided the feedstock for a new factory erected by The British Potash Co, a joint venture between British Cyanides and the Ministry of Munitions. This new Oldbury plant produced up to 60 tons per week of refined muriate of potash. an essential ingredient of agricultural fertilizer. However, because of a red tape snarl up between the Ministry of Munitions and the Board of Agriculture, potash could not be sold to potential users and product accumulated at the factory. The Ministry refused to implement its undertaking to help finance the operation and ultimately The Potash Co went into liquidation and the plant was scrapped in 1920. This was British Cyanides second encounter with officialdom. During the war it had received an urgent demand from the War Office to install additional plant to produce not less than 40 tons per week of manganate of soda. The plant started production at the beginning of November 1918 and was closed on Armistice Day. The Ministry of Food refused to pay for the installation and was supported by the Crown. The company eventually obtained judgment and damages via the courts.

In the immediate post-war years British Cyanides concentrated on producing yellow prussiate of soda, potash and, to a lesser extent, red prussiate produced by electrolysis in a plant designed by chief chemist Edmund Rossiter. Most of the prussiates output was exported to the USA but in 1922 the US government introduced the Fordney Tariff Act which effectively closed American markets to the company's own products.

However, it had the US sales agency for a German manufacturer of nitrogenous fertilizers used in the Southern cotton fields. This, combined with merchanting other chemicals kept the company afloat although it was driven to take on such sideline agencies as a cure for dog distemper. Company executives scoured the world for opportunities and during a visit to the US Kenneth Chance was told about converting sulphocyanide into thiourea for vulcanizing rubber and weighting (i.e. stiffening) silk. He could not have foreseen the long term implications of this idea upon the chequered fortunes of his company.

UK rubber manufacturers were unimpressed but the silk-dying industry was more receptive, since thiourea proved to be an antidote to the embrittling effect of the tin perchloride solution used to impart 'rustle' to taffeta and 'weight' to umbrella silk. However, quantities purchased by silk dyers in the UK were small and so Cyril Dingley, who was now Sales Manager, visited all the dyers of note in Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland and extracted annual contracts from many of them. But once again developments overtook demand and within two years taffeta and heavy rustling silks became unfashionable, having been superseded by rayon and silks with a softer feel.

By 1924 British Cyanides finances were severely stretched and the company faced bankruptcy yet again. At a crisis board meeting on the last Wednesday of July, the directors authorised the issue of debentures at 20% discount. Kenneth Chance asked the workforce at Oldbury to accept drastic wage cuts which would save the company £6000 per year but on the Saturday before the August Bank Holiday, the bank threatened Mm with foreclosure unless its £35,000 loan was repaid by the following Wednesday. In his own words, "The very brutality of the demand was its own undoing". He told the bankers what he thought of their threats (a view shared by many small businesses more recently?) and was given until Christmas to find the money.

Edmund Rossiter had been experimenting by condensing thiourea with formaldehyde and had produced water-white synthetic resin which contrasted favourably with the straw coloured or brown phenolic resin then available. Claimed as a world first, the formulation of these water-white resins was patented by British Cyanides. Resins mixed with slate dust, chalk, sawdust and other fillers were moulded into plaques and shown at the 1925 Wembley Exhibition. Applications in French polishing, lacquers, paint and even manufacture of wall plugs were discussed and samples were dispatched all over the country, but because of its straightened finances what British Cyanides needed was business to generate quick and profitable returns.

No white plastics moulding powder was then on the market, so production of white and pale-coloured powders seemed the preferred option and efforts were concentrated in this direction. One snag was that thiourea stained the steel moulds then current. Chromium plating overcame this staining but moulders were reluctant to incur the extra expense. Gradually, however, applications were developed in electrical components, ships fittings and tableware. It was tableware and other domestic products which eventually led British Cyanides to profitability, and an established future in the nascent plastics industry (plus a change of company name) with its Beetle resins and moulding materials. Because the company had no funds to develop its new products, Kenneth Chance persuaded two personal friends to finance formation in 1925 of The Beetle Products Co to purchase resin from British Cyanides and process it into Beetle moulding powder.

Why Beetle? The company had for some time stencilled a stylised beetle on cases containing its cyanide products. One, possibly apocryphal, explanation was that it was intended to warn illiterate labour in the South African goldfields that the product was dangerous. Another, more likely, explanation was that the beetle was used to symbolise activity and industry. Whatever the reason, resin samples at the Wembley exhibition were given out in bottles carrying a beetle logo and so the product was referred to as "that Beetle resin of yours".

A Midlands firm, Brookes & Adams, which moulded phenolic tableware called Banda Ware had started producing an extremely attractive mottled range from Beetle powder. Harrods was persuaded to give space in its Knightsbridge store for a display of this tableware together with other mouldings by The Streetly Manufacturing Co and Thomas de la Rue & Co. Opening towards the end of November 1926, the display attracted so much interest that after ten days Harrods asked Beetle Products to install an additional stand on the ground floor followed soon after by a third in the stationery department.

This success led to a two-week demonstration of Beetle products as part of Selfridges birthday celebrations in Spring 1927 which was followed by displays in all the major London stores. Success bred success. British Cyanides formed a further subsidiary, Beatl Sales, to act as agent for home and export sales of tableware and domestic products produced in Beetle material by a number of moulders. It also operated a retail shop in Regent Street which did much to stimulate acceptance by consumers of this new material. The reason for the slightly eccentric spelling of Beatl was that tableware buyers in some stores objected to products associated with an insect! Beatl was coined as a (tortured) contraction of "beat all" which sounded very similar to Beetle. Interestingly, a few years later when The Streetly Manufacturing Co was moulding tableware for sale in Woolworth stores, no objection was voiced to that being branded Beetleware. With its fortunes improved, British Cyanides was able to repay the two original shareholders whose trust had facilitated launching The Beetle Products Co and it became a wholly owned subsidiary. In 1929 The Streetly Manufacturing Co was purchased when its owner died, and despite the economic slump of the early 1930s, British Cyanides continued to grow.

By 1926 it was such as integral - and important - part of the UK plastics scene that its name was changed to British Industrial Plastics Ltd. The rest, in the words of the cliché, is history .... and another story.