Croda

caution !! this is an initial draft ...

I keep these notes on my server so I don't loose them !!

 

 

1925 - croda founded by George Crowe & Mr Dawe at Rawcliffe Bridge, Yorkshire to sell lanolin.  Crowe's nephew A P Wood appointed Manager.

1931 - first profit after NPL suggested lanolin was a good rust preventer.

1939 - wartime opportunities for hydraulic oils, camouflage creams & insect repellents.

1945 - Edgar Lower TD.

1946 - HQ at Snaith vicarage.

1949 - A P Wood dies Freddie Wood Sales Director.

1950 - Croda Inc formed.

1953 - breakthrough into cosmetics.

1954 - George Crowe dies. Edward Crowe becomes Chairman. First merger involves C M Keyworth of Leek manufacturers of fatty acid esters.

1955 - HQ at Cowick Hall, Snaith, Goole. Goole is a town, civil parish and port located approximately 45 miles inland on the confluence of the rivers Don and Ouse in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The port is 'highly versatile', and is capable of handling nearly 3 million tonnes of cargo per annum, making it one of the most important ports on the east coast of England. Goole is south of the M62 linking it with Kingston upon Hull in the east and the West Yorkshire urban belt in the west. The M18 runs west of the town, connecting it with South Yorkshire, the South and the Midlands. Goole also has a railway station with services to Hull Paragon Interchange, Doncaster, Sheffield and Leeds, as well as the commuter railway stations in between. There are also bus services from Goole to surrounding towns and villages. Goole is within commuting distance from Doncaster, Hull, Leeds and York.
Croda Italiana formed.

1960 - Edward Crowe dies. Freddie Wood becomes Chairman.

1964 - public company. Croda Nippon formed.

1967 - acquisitions - United Premier Oil Co, seed crushers, subsidiary United Oil Co, manufacturers of fatty acids.

1968 - British Glues & Chemicals, gelatine, and Bowmans Chemical, food acids & metal finishing, acquired. Croda Australia and Croda Canada formed.

1970 - L & H Holdings at Hull and Barking, modified vegetable oils for paints & inks. A B Fleming, printing inks & synthetic resins.

1971 - Croda South Africa and Croda Zimbabwe formed.

1974 - Croda France and Croda Brazil.

1975 - 50th Anniversary. Midland Yorkshire Holdings, synthetic chemicals & tar products and Kenneth Thelwall, blended oils & greases acquired.

1977 - joint venture in Mexico. Freddie Wood knighted.

1980 - collapse of UK manufacturing.

1982 - Burmah Oil takeover fails. Strategy of specialisation.

1986 - Croda Singapore formed. Sir Freddie retires Mike Cannon takes over.

1988 - John Kerr & Co acquired, fire fighting foams & chemicals. Major modernisation of Rawcliffe Bridge.

1989 - Mike Cannon retires. Merchant banker Michael Valentine Chairman.

1990 - Lorenzo's oil developed.

1991 - Novarom acquired, plant extracts acquired.

1993 - globalisation, Croda Nordica (Sweden), Poland (1994), India (1995), Shanghai (1996), Czech Republic (1996), Hungary (1997).

1997 - STOA and 'Sederma' skin care.

1998 - Westbrook acquired making Croda the world's largest lanolin producer. Croda Iberica.

1999 - Keith Hopkins, Chairman. Mike Humphreys CEO. Croda Argentina.

2000 - 75th Anniversary. Croda Korea.

2001 - Anthony Beevor, Chairman.

2003 - Croda Thailand.

2010 - In 2010 croda international was shortlisted  for the Price Waterhouse Coopers company of the year award ...

Edward Hindley would have been pleased ...

See also - croda history

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Croids from The Newark Advertiser

 

 

One of Newark’s foremost industrial companies, Croda Adhesives, off Winthorpe Road, celebrates 50 years of trading in the town this month. Today, Croda’s Newark factory is the company headquarters for an international network of adhesive manufacturing plants located across Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific. At home, meanwhile, it is interesting to think that whenever you tear open a Nestle or Cadbury’s chocolate bar, the special food-safe ‘cold-seal’ adhesive which holds the packaging together may well have been produced in Newark by Croda.

As with so many of today’s world-beating companies, however, the origins of Croda Adhesives are humble enough, having been the brainchild of just one man and his innovative ideas about the ways in which glue could be marketed and sold.

The company can trace its origins back to 1911 when a Mr P H W Serle registered a company known as Improved Liquid Glues Co Ltd. Up until that time almost every kind of glue was sold as a solid, requiring it to be dissolved in water and boiled before use. It was Mr Serle’s idea to manufacture a range of ready-to-use glues in liquid form, making them easier to apply and instantly attractive to both commercial and domestic users. His factory – the first to make so-called ‘prepared’ glues in this country – was located in Croydon, giving rise to the company’s first trade name, Croids.

Mr Serle’s early glues (made in the traditional way from bone and animal hide) proved highly successful and in 1919 when Allcock and Brown became the first aviators to fly nonstop across the Atlantic, their large wood and fabric biplane relied on Croid glues in some of its construction.

Such success had already led the company to seek new, extended, premises in Wapping, and in 1920 it became a subsidiary of the large British Glues and Chemicals combine.

A year later, a further move brought Croid to Bulwell in Nottingham, followed eight years later by a further relocation to Bermondsey in London. In 1940 the Bermondsey factory was heavily bombed and Croids production was transferred to a site in Newark already owned by British Glues and Chemicals. BGC had acquired the Newark family glue-making business of Quibell Brothers in 1920. The name Quibells, however, continued to be used for trading purposes until as late as the Sixties.

Quibell’s glue factory was located beside the Trent close to the old Bottom Lock, some distance off Winthorpe Road. Part of the premises survive to this day. With the war over and the Bermondsey factory still requiring considerable repair, Croids decided to remain in Newark and develop their site adjacent to the existing Quibell’s factory.

Building on from the warehouse loaned to them by BGC, Croids began to develop a new factory complex beside the main London-Edinburgh railway line. And it was the foundation stone for this new undertaking which was laid 50 years ago this month on May 25, 1948.

At the stone-laying ceremony the Mayor of Newark (Mr J H Knight) described the new building as 'making history for Newark' establishing a new permanent home for Croid after its previous wanderings around the country.

The new factory opened a year later in April, 1949, by the then BGC chairman, Mr Harold Cotes.

The Newark Advertiser reported that 'The new building has a smart facade of facing bricks with stone dressings – inside there is a terrazzo entrance hall off which lead offices and a terrazzo staircase to the upper storey where the laboratory is located'.

With the new works in full production the company was reported to be making no fewer than 85 different kinds of glue, each specially formulated for specific purposes – from use in the woodworking and leather industries to commercial packaging and bookbinding.

A new department in the late Forties saw the company experimenting with the first PVA emulsion adhesives which were to become the company’s principal output during the Fifties and Sixties.

Croids played a central role in developing the new PVA adhesive technology, first by buying in the compounds from outside, but later using its own polymers, developed in-house.

A great deal of additional pioneering work into the new processes was carried out in the Newark laboratories leading ultimately to the development of the first hot melt adhesives in the UK.

Another milestone in the company’s history was reached in 1968 when British Glues & Chemicals (including Croid) were taken over by Croda International.

From that time onwards the company has gone from strength to strength in Newark and in 1989 celebrated the opening of its new multi-million pound global headquarters at the Winthorpe Road site in Newark.

From a company which came to the town almost as a refugee in the dark days of the second world war, the Newark offices of Croda now control a network of adhesive manufacturers across the globe from the USA and Canada to Brazil, Belgium, Italy and Australia.

New markets are currently being opened up in China and the Far East, while during 1997 the company’s sales growth in South America was described as spectacular. In Newark, meanwhile, investment in new technology remains the company’s watchword with new plant recently having been installed to produce adhesives for the food packaging industry.

 

Any corrections and additional information gratefully received contact john p birchall

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