Joseph Crosfield & Sons Ltd
Joseph Crosfield established his soap manufacturing business in Warrington in 1814, following an apprenticeship with Anthony Clapham, a druggist and chemist and later soap manufacturer in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The company became known as Joseph Crosfield & Sons sometime around Crosfield’s death in 1844, when his three sons and his brother George took over the running of the company.
Crosfield chose Warrington as the base for his business because of its location on the River Mersey, its connections to the canal network, and its proximity to other large scale soap manufactories in St Helens, Runcorn and Liverpool. Crosfield took on the premises of a failed wire mill in the Bank Quay area of Warrington. The company began to turn a profit from 1818, and subsequently expanded its operations, with Crosfield buying machinery from a nearby corn mill in 1820. He was joined in the business by his younger brother William in the same year.
By the mid-1830s, the company produced around 900 tons of soap per year. Out of 296 soap manufacturers operating in England and Scotland during 1832, Joseph Crosfield & Sons Ltd was the 25th largest business. Most soap makers at the time manufactured their own alkali using the Leblanc process, rather than using alkali from vegetable sources, and Joseph Crosfield was no exception. He acquired the premises of a bankrupt alum works in St Helens and set up a separate business with his older brother James and Josias Christopher Gamble as business partners.
By the time Joseph Crosfield died and his sons and brother took over the business in 1844, the company was very successful, generating large profits. After Crosfield’s death, the company continued to expand, and began producing a range of chemicals for use as ingredients in other products. In 1883, it became one of the first factories to install electric light.
The company was registered as a private limited company in 1896, changing its name to Joseph Crosfield & Sons Ltd. In 1909, it acquired the rights to manufacture the soap brand Persil in the UK. Between 1911 and 1919, the company was briefly owned by Brunner, Mond & Co. This parent company sold its shares in Joseph Crosfield & Sons Ltd to Lever Brothers in 1919, becoming a subsidiary of Unilever in 1929. Joseph Crosfield & Sons Ltd continued to operate as a separate subsidiary company until 1964, when Unilever bought up all publicly held shares in the company and cancelled them. Soap manufacture passed to Lever Brothers, with Joseph Crosfield & Sons Ltd focusing on its specialty chemicals business. ICI acquired the specialty chemicals division in 1997, manufacturing ingredients for detergents and toothpastes. ICI sold its interests in the company to Ineos Capital in 2001, with Joseph Crosfield & Sons Ltd renamed Ineos Silicas. The Bank Quay site closed in 2020.