Union
Carbide Corporation
The giant multi-national
American company, Union Carbide, was formally
incorporated in November 1917 as Union Carbide
& Carbon Corporation - the name
reflecting their earlier history in carbon
products (including carbons for electric arc
street lights and electric furnaces) and calcium
carbide for making acetylene for
carriage lamps.
Such was the emergence of new technology in the
1920s and 30s that the Company
soon became involved, through mergers and
expansions, into new areas such as gases
and metal alloys. Its particular strength was the
ability to transmit laboratory-scale
operations into full-scale production - a skill
that proved of exceptional value in World
War II in the manufacture of butadiene and
polyethylene used in the production of
synthetic rubber and high-frequency cable
insulation respectively. The Company was
also deeply involved in the production of the
atom bomb.
Post-war, the manufacture of polyethylene
developed into one of their major
successes. The high-pressure process had
originally been acquired as part of a
war-time agreement with the inventors of
polyethylene, ICI. Union Carbide had also
acquired in 1939 Leo Baekeland’s Bakelite
Corporation which they added to a
portfolio of other plastics including PVC and,
later, plastics such as polyester and
epoxide resins and various engineering plastics.
In the UK, Bakelite Limited was used
as the selling arm for Union Carbide polyethylene
which was marketed under the
famous Bakelite trademark and in 1958 a new 10,000
tons per annum PE plant was
opened at Grangemouth, Scotland to replace the
imported American product.
By 1957, the company (now called Union Carbide
Corporation) had 400 plants in
North America alone and affiliated companies
throughout the world. Its product range
was huge, ranging from electronic components and
cryogenics to plastics and metals.
In the UK, in 1963, UCC merged its UK plastics
interests with those of the Distillers
Company to form Bakelite Xylonite Ltd. which at
one time employed 11,000 people.
UCC became the sole owner of the new company in
1970 but sold it, together with
most of its other European plastics interests, to
BP Chemicals in 1979. BP changed the
name to BXL Plastics Ltd. A great tragedy was to
overwhelm the company. In 1984,
at Bhopal, India a methyl isocyanate plant owned
jointly by the Indian government and
UCC accidentally leaked the deadly gas into the
nearby town causing 2,800 deaths
with thousands more severely affected. It was the
worst industrial disaster in history
and the company never recovered. Its businesses
were gradually sold off to meet its
huge liabilities and the particular plastics
jewel in their crown, Unipol process for
making polyethylene which owned jointly with
EXXON, was sold in April, 2000,
together with much else to the Dow Corporation in
America.
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