Billingham Manufacturing Plant

Billingham Manufacturing Plant
Chemical works
Location within County Durham
Former names	Brunner Mond, ICI
General information
Type	Chemical works
Location	Borough of Stockton-on-Tees
Address	Billingham, TS23 1PY
Coordinates	54°35′28″N 1°15′39″W / 54.59107°N 1.2607°W / 54.59107; -1.2607
Elevation	12 m (39 ft)
Landlord	CF Fertilisers UK Limited

The Billingham Manufacturing Plant is a large chemical works based in the Borough of , England. In agricultural terms, it is one of the most important factories in Britain.

Ammonia had first been made in Germany in 1913 by BASF at Oppau, near Ludwigshafen (the plant was destroyed in 1921 by the Oppau explosion). Ammonium compounds are not only used for fertilisers, but explosives.

Billingham-on-Tees was a small village in 1917, when its Grange Farm was chosen to be the site of a large chemical works.

On 22 March 1918, the Minister of Munitions approved the site to be developed as a factory that would make ammonium nitrate. It was initially known as the Government Nitrogen Factory – it fixated atmospheric nitrogen.

Brunner Mond took over the works on 22 April 1920, in an agreement with the Minister of Munitions, Andrew Weir, 1st Baron Inverforth. The site was developed (copied) from knowledge of the ammonia plant at Oppau in Germany, and run as Synthetic Ammonia and Nitrates Limited. Other plants copied were at Sheffield, Alabama, La Grande-Paroisse, and one owned by General Chemical near New York.

In December 1926, ICI was formed from the merger of Brunner Mond, Nobel Explosives, the United Alkali Company and the British Dyestuffs Corporation, largely controlled by Alfred Mond, 1st Baron Melchett and Harry McGowan, 1st Baron McGowan.

By 1932, the plant employed around 5,000 people.

Aldous Huxley visited the works and this gave him the inspiration for his famous 1931 book Brave New World. Later The Alan Parsons Project would name their 1984 album Ammonia Avenue after the plant.