Chemical Industry
CHEMICAL INDUSTRY
CHEMICAL INDUSTRY. U.S. chemical industry shipments total about $450 billion annually. The industry is a major provider of raw materials for consumers, manufacturing, defense, and exports (about 15 percent of the total). End markets include consumer products, health care, construction, home furnishings, paper, textiles, paints, electronics, food, and transportation. In fact, most industries use chemicals as their key raw materials. For example, the auto has about $1,500 of chemicals such as paints, lube oils, rubber tires, plastic, and synthetic fibers; a cell phone is feasible because of its use of silicon-based chemicals and a durable plastic assembly; microwave ovens are made with silicon chips, plastic housings, and fire-retardant plastic additives.
Chemical industry sales and profitability tend to follow the U.S. consumer economy, with peak sales and profits a few years after strong consumer economic growth periods and low points during recessions. While demand growth for the overall chemical industry has slowed since the 1960s, it is still better than annual gross domestic product (GDP) gains. Operating margins were about 6 percent in 2000 compared with a peak of almost 11 percent in 1995. Research and development and capital spending by the industry are about $30 billion each, or just under 7 percent of sales. The fastest growth areas are life sciences, specialties such as electronic chemicals, and select plastics. The overall employment level of the chemical and allied industries is over 1 million people, with about 600,000 in direct manufacturing. Most of the chemical industry's basic manufacturing plants are located in the Gulf Coast (primarily Texas and Louisiana) due to the proximity of key energy raw materials. Finished product manufacture, by contrast, is located closer to population centers on the East and West Coasts and in the Midwest.
Product Categories
External sales of the chemistry business can be divided into a few broad categories, including basic chemicals (about 35 to 37 percent of the dollar output), life sciences (30 percent), specialty chemicals (20 to 25 percent) and consumer products (about 10 percent).
Basic chemicals are a broad chemical category including polymers, bulk petrochemicals and intermediates, other derivatives and basic industrials, inorganic chemicals, and fertilizers. Typical growth rates for basic chemicals are about 0.5 to 0.7 times GDP. Product prices are generally less than fifty cents per pound. Polymers, the largest revenue segment at about 33 percent of the basic chemicals dollar value, includes all categories of plastics and man-made fibers. The major markets for plastics are packaging, followed by home construction, containers, appliances, pipe, transportation, toys, and games. The largest-volume polymer product, polyethylene (PE), is used mainly in packaging films and other markets such as milk bottles, containers, and pipe. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), another large-volume product, is principally used to make pipe for construction markets as well as siding and, to a much smaller extent, transportation and packaging materials. Polypropylene (PP), similar in volume to PVC, is used in markets ranging from packaging, appliances, and containers to clothing and carpeting. Polystyrene (PS), another large-volume plastic, is used principally for appliances and packaging as well as toys and recreation. The leading man-made fibers include poly-ester, nylon, polypropylene, and acrylics, with applications including apparel, home furnishings, and other industrial and consumer use. The principal raw materials for polymers are bulk petrochemicals.
Chemicals in the bulk petrochemicals and intermediates segment are primarily made from liquified petroleum gas (LPG), natural gas, and crude oil. Their sales volume is close to 30 percent of overall basic chemicals. Typical large-volume products include ethylene, propylene, benzene, toluene, xylenes, methanol, vinyl chloride monomer (VCM), styrene, butadiene, and ethylene oxide. These chemicals are the starting points for most polymers and other organic chemicals as well as much of the specialty chemicals category. Other derivatives and basic industries include synthetic rubber, surfactants, dyes and pigments, turpentine, resins, carbon black, explosives, and rubber products and contribute about 20 percent of the basic chemicals external sales. Inorganic chemicals (about 12 percent of the revenue output) make up the oldest of the chemical categories. Products include salt, chlorine, caustic soda, soda ash, acids (such as nitric, phosphoric, and sulfuric), titanium dioxide, and hydrogen peroxide. Fertilizers are the smallest category (about 6 percent) and include phosphates, ammonia, and potash chemicals.
Life sciences (about 30 percent of the dollar output of the chemistry business) include differentiated chemical and biological substances, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, animal health products, vitamins, and crop protection chemicals. While much smaller in volume than other chemical sectors, their products tend to have very high prices—over ten dollars per pound—growth rates of 1.5 to 6 times GDP, and research and development spending at 15 to 25 percent of sales. Life science products are usually produced with very high specifications and are closely scrutinized by government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration. Crop protection chemicals, about 10 percent of this category, include herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides.
Specialty chemicals are a category of relatively high valued, rapidly growing chemicals with diverse end product markets. Typical growth rates are one to three times GDP with prices over a dollar per pound. They are generally characterized by their innovative aspects. Products are sold for what they can do rather than for what chemicals they contain. Products include electronic chemicals, industrial gases, adhesives and sealants as well as coatings, industrial and institutional cleaning chemicals, and catalysts. Coatings make up about 15 percent of specialty chemicals sales, with other products ranging from 10 to 13 percent.
Consumer products include direct product sale of chemicals such as soaps, detergents, and cosmetics. Typical growth rates are 0.8 to 1.0 times GDP.
Every year, the American Chemistry Council tabulates the U.S. production of the top 100 basic chemicals. In 2000, the aggregate production of the top 100 chemicals totaled 502 million tons, up from 397 million tons in 1990. Inorganic chemicals tend to be the largest volume, though much smaller in dollar revenue terms due to their low prices. The top 11 of the 100 chemicals in 2000 were sulfuric acid (44 million tons), nitrogen (34), ethylene (28), oxygen (27), lime (22), ammonia (17), propylene (16), polyethylene (15), chlorine (13), phosphoric acid (13) and diammonium phosphates (12).
The Industry in the Twentieth Century
While Europe's chemical industry had been the most innovative in the world in the nineteenth century, the U.S. industry began to overshadow Europe and the rest of the world in both developments and revenues by the mid-1900s. A key reason was its utilization of significant native mineral deposits, including phosphate rock, salt, sulfur, and trona soda ash as well as oil, coal, and natural gas. By 1914, just before World War I, the U.S. industry was already 40 percent larger than that of Germany. At that time, the fertilizer sector was the largest, at 40 percent of total chemical sales, with explosives the next largest sector. Much of the petroleum-based chemicals industry did not develop into a meaningful sector until the post–World War II period. In the 1970s and 1980s, chemical production began to grow rapidly in other areas of the world; the growth was fueled in the Middle East by local energy deposits and in Asia due to local energy deposits and by increased demand. At the end of the century, the United States was the largest producer of chemicals by a large margin, with the overall European and Asian areas a close second and third. On a country basis, Japan and Germany were a distant second and third.
In the early twentieth century, the availability of large deposits of sulfur spurred an innovative process development by Hermann Frasch in which hot water was piped into the deposits to increase recovery. Extensive power availability at Niagara Falls also enabled the growth of an electrochemical industry, including the production of aluminum from bauxite (via Charles Martin Hall's process), the production of fused sodium for caustic soda, and eventually sodium hydroxide and chlorine from salt brine. Other technology innovations spurred by local deposits were Herbert Dow's bromine process and Edward D. Acheson's electrothermic production of carborundum from silicon and carbon.
The coal-based chemical industry, which had been the major impetus for Germany's and England's chemical growth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was overshadowed before World War II by U.S. petroleum and natural gas–based chemical production. Key organic chemical products made from coal included benzene, phenol, coke, acetylene, methanol, and formaldehyde. All of these chemicals are now made much less expensively and in larger volumes from petroleum and natural gas. Coke, made from coal, was combined with calcium oxide (quicklime) in an arc furnace to make acetylene. Acetylene was replaced as a raw material by LPG-based ethylene. BASF in Germany and American Cyanamid in the United States had been the major innovators of acetylene-based chemicals. Carbon monoxide, also produced from coal, had been the predecessor to chemicals such as methanol, formaldehyde, and ethylene glycol.
The U.S. petrochemical industry, which got its strongest commercial start between the two world wars, enabled companies such as Union Carbide, Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon), Shell, and Dow to make aliphatic chemicals, replacing coal-based production. From 1921 to 1939, petroleum-based chemical production skyrocketed from 21 million pounds to over 3 billion. Meanwhile, coal tar–based chemicals remained in the 300 million pound area. Among the commercial petrochemical innovations was the production of isopropanol and other C3s from refinery propylene, beginning in 1917 by Standard Oil. In the 1920s, Union Carbide began to make ethylene by cracking ethane in its Tonowanda, New York, site. In the mid-1920s, it added ethylene and derivative as ethylene oxide/glycol production in Charleston, West Virginia, creating the Prestone brand ethylene glycol product. By the early 1930s, Union Carbide was making as many as fifty petrochemical derivatives. In 1931, Shell built its first natural gas–based ammonia plant. Also in the 1930s, Shell started to make methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) and other oxygenated solvents from refinery butylenes. They also dimerized refinery isobutylene to make the high octane fuel isooctane. Just before World War II, Dow started making styrene monomer and polystyrene from ethylene and benzene.
World War II was a catalyst for even more major expansions of the U.S. chemical industry. Growing demand for synthetic rubber–based tires spurred more ethylene, propylene, and C4 production to make GR-S synthetic tire rubber. Butylenes were dehydrogenated to butadiene, and ethylene along with benzene was used to make styrene monomer.
Commercial developments in the plastics industry were very rapid in the postwar period. The start of the big-volume plastics had only occurred a decade earlier, when the British company Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) discovered a process to make polyethylene (PE), which was first used as a high-frequency cable shield material for radar sets. Now most PE is used to make products such as food and garbage bags, packaging films, and milk containers. Shipments of PE, which were as little as 5 million pounds in 1945, grew to 200 million by 1954, 600 million in 1958, 1.2 billion in 1960, and 14.5 billion in 2000. Similar gains occurred with PVC, which went from 1 million pounds before World War II to 120 million late in the war, 320 million in 1952, and 7.9 billion in 2000. Polystyrene, which was first made in 1839, was not commercialized until Dow made it in 1937, producing about 190,000 pounds that year. Shipments rose to 15 million by 1945, 680 in 1960, and 7.3 billion in 2000.
Other commercial applications during the period around World War II included DuPont's commercialization of nylon for hosiery, which was subsequently the material of choice for parachutes. Most nylon now goes into the manufacture of carpeting. Methyl methacrylate (MMA) was first made in Germany but not truly commercialized until the 1930s, when ICI used it to make sliding canopies for fighter aircraft. The Rohm and Haas Company and DuPont both supplied the acrylic sheet. Another prewar discovery was DuPont's plastic PTFE (branded Teflon) in 1938, which was not introduced until 1946. Another important chemical, an epoxy based on ethylene oxide, was first made by Union Carbide in 1948.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
American Chemistry Council. Guide to the Business of Chemistry. Arlington, Va.: American Chemistry Council, 2002.
"Fiftieth Anniversary." Chemical and Engineering New s, 15 January 1973.
"The First Seventy-five Years—From Adolescence to Maturity." Chemical Week Magazine, 2 August 1989.
List, H. L. Petrochemical Technology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1986.
Shreve, R. Norris, and Joseph A. Brink Jr. The Chemical Process Industries. 4th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 1977.
TedSemegran
See alsoChemistry ; Petrochemical Industry ; Pharmaceutical Industry .
Ashley, Laura
ASHLEY, Laura
Welsh designer
Born: Laura Mountney in Dowlais, Glamorgan, Wales, 7 September 1925. Education: Attended Marshall's School, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, until 1932; mainly self-taught in design. Military Service: Served in the Women's Royal Naval Service. Family: Married Bernard Ashley, 1949; children: Jane, David, Nick, and Emma. Career: Worked as secretary, National Federation of Women's Institutes, London, 1945-52; founder/partner, with Bernard Ashley, Ashley-Mountney Ltd. printed textiles, 1954-68, in Kent, 1956-61, and in Carno, Wales, from 1961; opened first retail outlet, London, 1967; Laura Ashley Ltd. established, 1968; Geneva and Amsterdam stores opened, 1972; Paris, 1973; first U.S. shop, San Francisco, 1974; New York store opened, 1977; son Nick Ashley took over as design director, 1984; Laura Ashley Foundation created, 1984; company went public, 1985; shops topped 550 shops in 63 countries, 1993; Bernard Ashley resigned from board, 1998; stake (40-percent) of company sold to Malaysian United Industries, 1998; North American stores sold, 1999; flagship Regent Street store redone and reopened, 2000; plans for 100 home furnishings initiated, 2001. Awards: Queen's award for Export Achievement, 1977; Bernard Ashley knighted, 1987. Died: 17 September 1985, in Coventry, England. Company Address: 27 Bagley's Lane, Fulham, London SW6 2QA, England. Company Website: www.lauraashley.com.
Publications
By ASHLEY:
Books
Laura Ashley Home Furnishings 1981, Carno, Wales, 1981.
Laura Ashley Home Furnishings 1982, Carno, Wales, 1982.
Laura Ashley Home Furnishings 1983, Carno, Wales, 1983.
Laura Ashley Home Furnishings 1984, Carno, Wales, 1984.
Laura Ashley Home Decoration 1985, Carno, Wales, 1985.
Laura Ashley Book of Home Decorating (with Elizabeth Dickson), Carno, Wales, London & New York, 1985, 1988, 1990, 1997.
Laura Ashley Home Furnishings 1986, Carno, Wales, 1986.
Laura Ashley Home Furnishings 1987, Carno, Wales, 1987.
Laura Ashley Complete Guide to Home Decorating, Carno, Wales,1987.
Laura Ashley at Home: Six Family Homes and Their Transformation (with Nick Ashley), London, 1988.
Laura Ashley Guide to Country Decorating (with Lorrie Mack and Lucinda Edgerton), London, 1992.
Leitch, Michael, The Laura Ashley Book of Anniversary Delights, 1993.
Laura Ashley Decorating with Fabric: A Room-by-Room Guide to Home Decorating (with Lorrie Mack and Diana Dodge), New York, 1995.
Berry, Susan, Laura Ashley Decorating with Paper & Paint: A Room-by-Room Guide to Home Decorating, New York, 1995.
——, Laura Ashley: The Color Book, Using Color to Decorate Your Home, New York & London, 1995.
Laura Ashley Decorating with Patterns & Textures: Using Color, Pattern, and Texture in the Home, London, 1996.
On ASHLEY:
Books
Carter, Ernestine, Magic Names of Fashion, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1980.
Dickson, Elizabeth, and Margaret Colvin, The Laura Ashley Book of Home Decorating, London, 1982; New York, 1984.
Gale, Iain, and Susan Irvine, Laura Ashley Style, New York &London, 1987.
Sebba, Anne, Laura Ashley: A Life by Design, London, 1990, 1991.
Evans, John, and Gabrielle Stoddard, Laura Ashley: Fashion Designer, Caerdydd, Wales, 1996.
Stegemeyer, Anne, Who's Who in Fashion, Third Edition, New York, 1996.
Articles
"Queen Victoriana," in Sophisticat (London), November 1974.
"The Laura Ashley Look," in Brides (London), Spring 1975.
Dumoulin, Marie-Claude, "Chez Laura Ashley," in Elle (Paris), 11October 1976.
Gould, Rachael, "From Patchwork to a Small Print to World Wide: How the Laura Ashley Family Business Grew Up," in Vogue (London), 15 April 1980.
Cleave, Maureen, "Makers of Modern Fashion: Laura Ashley," in the Observer supplement, (London), 12 October 1980.
Sheffield, Robert, "The Twist in the Tail," in Creative Review (London), January 1984.
"Young Nick," in She (London), April 1984.
"Cut From the Same Cloth as Mom and Dad, Laura Ashley's Kids Get All Wrapped Up in the Family Business," in People Weekly, 24 September 1984.
Slesin, Suzanne, "Laura Ashley, British Designer, is Dead at 60," in the New York Times, 18 September 1985.
Dickson, Elizabeth, "Laura Ashley: Her Life and Gifts, by Those Who Knew Her," in the Observer, 22 September 1985.
Sulitzer, Paul-Loup, "Laura Ashley: Une impression d'éternité," in Elle (Paris), 4 August 1986.
"The Ashley Empire," in the Sunday Express Magazine (London), 25September 1988.
Ducas, June, "Inside Story," in Woman's Journal (London), October 1988.
"Laura Ashley, A Licensing Legend," in HFD—The Weekly Home Furnishings Newspaper, 26 December 1988.
Finnerty, Anne, "Profile of Laura Ashley," in Textile Outlook International (London), January 1990.
Fernaud, Dierdre, and Margaret Park, "After Laura," in the Sunday Times (London), 4 February 1990.
Grieve, Amanda, "Clotheslines," in Harpers & Queen (London), April 1993.
Bain, Sally, "Life Begins at 40 for Laura Ashley," in Marketing, 13May 1993.
Levine, Joshua, "Wilted Flowers: Laura Ashley Holdings Plc.," in Forbes, 10 April 1995.
Flynn, Julia, "Giving Laura Ashley a Yank: Anne Iverson Has Restored Profits and Refocused on the Home," in Business Week, 27 May 1996.
Lee, Julian, "The Floral Dance," in Marketing, 28 August 1997.
White, Constance C.R., "A Makeover for Laura Ashley," in the New York Times, 19 May 1998.
Hosenball, Mark, "Rendering Unto Laura," in Newsweek, 8 February 1999.
Smith, Alison, "Laura Ashley Shows Flower Power," in the Financial Times, 27 May 2001.
***Welsh designer Laura Ashley developed and distilled the British romantic style of neo-Victorianism, reflecting past eras in clothing, textiles, accessories, and furnishings and did so demonstrating classic country styling. Her approach to design was inspired by her environment, the surrounding Welsh countryside, and her yearning to return to all things natural. Integrating ideas adopted from the designs and qualities of past eras, she combined elements to create a look of nostalgic simplicity and naive innocence. Floral sprigged cotton fabrics, often directly adapted and developed from 18th-and 19th-century patterns, paisleys, and tiny prints worked with romantic detailing to create a style that was original and easily recognized.
Ashley's style possessed old world charm with individual rustic freshness, reflected in traditional beliefs of bygone days. Victorian nightshirts, Edwardian-style dresses, the introduction of the long smock in 1968, delicately trimmed with lace, pin-tucked bodices, tiered skirts, and full puffed sleeves became her trademark, aimed at the middle market and retailed at affordable prices. Laura Ashley Ltd. rose from the modest beginnings of a small cottage industry, producing a simple range of printed headscarves and table mats in the Ashley kitchen, to the development of a company that became a huge enterprise of international renown. It was a fairy story in itself.
Ashley's self-taught skill produced ranges of womenswear, childrenswear, bridalwear, accessories, and furnishings. She established home interiors consisting of coordinated ranges of bed linens, wall tiles, curtains, cushions, and upholstery. Her brilliant concept of fabrics, her discerning research of past eras for new inspiration, and her study and reinterpretation of antique textiles led to the considerable success and endurance of the Laura Ashley label.
Traditional floral prints combined together, printed in two colors and various color combinations, distinguished her work. Through the technical expertise and experimentation of Bernard Ashley, Laura's husband and business partner, came new developments and improved machinery, which in turn extended versatility. New and subtle color combinations were produced, often to Laura's own design. Natural fibres, crisp cottons, and lawn fabrics expanded to include ranges in twill, silk, wool, crêpe, velvet, corduroy, and eventually jersey fabrics.
Along with the 1960s youth revolution came a move towards romanticism, conservation, and world peace, an alternative to modern living, pop culture, mass-produced clothing, and vivid Parisian fashions. Due to her convincing beliefs in past values, quality, and the revival of romantic simplicity, Ashley's success was overwhelming. Bernard's business acuity and Laura's determination led to the development of excellent marketing techniques. Retail settings, complementary to the old world style of neo-Victorianism, promoted a look of individuality and quality.
Throughout the 1980s the Laura Ashley style retained its unique and easily recognizable image, even after the real Laura Ashley's tragic death, after a fall, in September 1985. The Ashleys' son, Nick, took over as design director in the year before his mother's death, and the Laura Ashley style evolved, extending to all ranges to incorporate contemporary fashion ideas, including the introduction of jersey for practical and easy-to-wear clothing. In addition to Nick, the other Ashley children, Jane, David, and Emma, all had roles within the family business.
In the 1990s the company lost its way; its lovely clothing was perceived as outdated and frumpy and the Laura Ashley image suffered considerably. Amid a series of executive changes, restructuring, and loss of market share in the years following founder Laura Ashley's death, the company finally regained its footing by retooling its image, updating its clothing, and expanding its home furnishings collection. A series of coffee-table books, which had been published annually in the late 1980s, grew to include how-to guides on home decorating in a myriad of styles from the Laura Ashley Guide to Country Decorating in 1992 to the Laura Ashley Decorating with Patterns & Textures: Using Color, Pattern, and Texture in the Home, in 1997.
Selling a 40-percent stake in the company to Malaysia United Industries in 1998, for $74 million, gave Laura Ashley a desperately needed infusion of cash. Next came the difficult decision to close many of its manufacturing facilities in Wales, then the sale of its underperforming North American stores to an investor group funded by Mayalsia United. By the start of the 21st century, Laura Ashley's Regent Street flagship store had reopened after a ceiling to floor refurbishment, and the company announced plans for its own website as well as opening 100 home furnishings stores by 2005. Rejuvenated and in the black after years of losses, Laura Ashley has regained its status, rediscovered its identity, and repositioned its signature style.
—Carol MaryBrown;
updated by NellyRhodes
chemical industry
Many heavy industries, such as iron, produced as byproducts inorganic chemicals which, with further processing, found markets. Amongst these were agricultural fertilizers such as basic slag and essential components of products such as washing powders. Output of raw materials such as common salt became of increasing importance and firms led by Lever Brothers formed the Salt Union which lasted for some years, dominating its supply in the late 19th cent. Research and development in these fields of chemical manufacture were undertaken by Brunner and Mond. Their United Alkali Company merged with the explosives company Nobel Industries and the British Dyestuffs Corporation in 1926 to form Imperial Chemical Industries.
Applications of research in organic chemistry during the 19th cent. enabled the development of firms making solvents, synthetic dyes, and new materials. The most important of these were developments from combinations of cellulose which made possible a wide range of new products including parkesine (the first commercial plastic), photographic film, and viscose rayon.
During the 20th cent. the demands for new chemicals continued in order to reduce imports and to cut costs. Thus rayon was invented and marketed as artificial silk. Courtaulds sold this cheaper fibre which was used for clothing and furnishing fabrics. Similarly Lever Brothers and the Dutch company of Jurgens combined in 1929 to form Unilever, whose core businesses had depended on making soap, margarine, and cattle feed, but which then produced pharmaceuticals and food chemicals. Developments in long-chain polymer chemistry during the middle decades of the 20th cent. gave rise to many products: polythene, nylon, and terylene. The raw materials for these products derived from coal or crude oil. Major international oil companies became closely involved in chemical manufacturing and often undertook research to tailor-make some product for special uses such as materials for aircraft tyres.
The most modern chemical industries are those concerned with biochemistry, microbiology, and particularly pharmaceutical research. Associated with household names such as Boots, Fisons, Glaxo, and ICI and Zenaca, they all demand heavy research and development investment.
Ian John Ernest Keil